Excursions

o

MR. THOREAU'S WRITINGS.

I.
WALDEN.

1 vol. 16mo. Price $1.25.

II. '

A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND
MERRIMACK RIVERS.

1 vol. 12mo. Price $1.50.
TICKNOR AND FIELDS, PUBLISHERS.

last

EXCURSIONS.

BY

HENRY D. THOREAU.

AUTHOR OF " WARDEN," AND " A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND
MERRIMACK KIVERS."

ojK^r^

I

Library.

TICK NOR AND FIELDS
1863.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by

TICKNOR & FIELDS,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY H. 0. HOUGHTON.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 7

NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS . . 37

A WALK TO WACHUSETT 73

THE LANDLORD 97

A WINTER WALK 109

THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES . . 135

WALKING 161

AUTUMNAL TINTS ...... 215

WILD APPLES 266

NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT 307

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

BY R. W. EMERSON.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU was the last male de
scendant of a French ancestor who came to this coun
try from the Isle of Guernsey. His character exhibited
occasional traits drawn from this blood in singular com
bination with a very strong Saxon genius.

He was born in Concord, Massachusetts, on the 12th
of July, 1817. He was graduated at Harvard College
in 1837, but without any literary distinction. An icon
oclast in literature, he seldom thanked colleges for their
service to him, holding them in small esteem, whilst yet
his debt to them was important. After leaving the
University, he joined his brother in teaching a private
school, which he soon renounced. His father was a
manufacturer of lead-pencils, and Henry applied him
self for a time to this craft, believing he could make a
better pencil than was then in use. After completing
his experiments, he exhibited his work to chemists and
artists in Boston, and having obtained their certificates
to its excellence and to its equality with the best Lon
don manufacture, he returned home contented. His
friends congratulated him that he had now opened his
way to fortune. But he replied, that he should never

8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

make another pencil. " Why should I ? I would not
do again what I have done once." He resumed his
endless walks and miscellaneous studies, making every
day some new acquaintance, with Nature, though as yet
never speaking of zoology or botany, since, though very
studious of natural facts, he was incurious of technical
and textual science.

At this time, a strong, healthy youth, fresh from col
lege, whilst all his companions were choosing their pro
fession, or eager to begin some lucrative employment, it
was inevitable that his thoughts should be exercised on
the same question, and it required rare decision to refuse
all the accustomed paths, and keep his solitary freedom
at the cost of disappointing the natural expectations of
his family and friends: all the more difficult that he
had a perfect probity, was exact in securing his own
independence, and in. holding every man to the like
duty. But Thoreau never faltered. He was a born
protestant. He declined to give up his large ambition
of knowledge and action for any narrow craft or profes
sion, aiming at a much more comprehensive calling, the
art of living well. If he slighted and defied the opin
ions of others, it was only that he was more intent to
reconcile his practice with his own belief. Never idle
or self-indulgent, he preferred, when he wanted money,
earning it by some piece of manual labor agreeable to
him, as building a boat or a fence, planting, grafting,
surveying, or other short work, to any long engage
ments. With his hardy habits atod few wants, his skill
in wood-craft, and his powerful arithmetic, he was very
competent to live in any part of the world. It would

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 9

cost him less time to supply his wants than another.
He was therefore secure of his leisure.

A natural skill for mensuration, growing out of his
mathematical knowledge, and his habit of ascertaining
the measures and distances of objects which interested
him, the size of trees, the depth and extent of ponds
and rivers, the height of mountains, and the air-line
distance of his favorite summits, — this, and his inti
mate knowledge of the territory about Concord, made
him drift into the profession of land-surveyor. It had
the advantage for him that it led him continually into
new and secluded grounds, and helped his studies of
Nature. His accuracy and skill in this work were
readily appreciated, and he found all the employment
he wanted.

He could easily solve the problems of the surveyor,
but he was daily beset with graver questions, which he
manfully confronted. He interrogated every custom,
and wished to settle all his practice on an ideal founda
tion. He was a protestant a Foutrance, and few lives
contain so many renunciations. He was bred to no
profession ; he never married ; he lived alone ; he never
went to church ; he never voted ; he refused to pay a
tax to the State ; he ate no flesh, he drank no wine, he
never knew the use of tobacco ; and, though a natural
ist, he used neither trap nor gun. He chose, wisely, no
doubt, for himself, to be the bachelor of thought and
Nature. He had no talent for wealth, and knewr how
to be poor without the least hint of squalor or inele
gance. Perhaps he fell into his way of living without
forecasting it much, but approved it with later wisdom.

10 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

" I am often reminded," he wrote in his journal, " that,
if I had bestowed on me the wealth of Crossus, my
aims must be still the same, and my means essentially
the same." He had no temptations to fight against, —
no appetites, no passions, no taste for elegant trifles. A
fine house, dress, the manners and talk of highly culti
vated people were all thrown away on him. He much
preferred a good Indian, and considered these refine
ments as impediments to conversation, wishing to meet
his companion on the simplest terms. He declined invi
tations to dinner-parties, because there each was in every
one's way, and he could not meet the individuals to any
purpose. " They make their pride," he said, " in mak
ing their dinner cost much ; I make my pride in making
my dinner cost little." When asked at table what dish
he preferred, he answered, " The nearest." He did not
like the taste of wine, and never had a vice in his life.
He said, — "I have a faint recollection of pleasure
derived from smoking dried lily-stems, before I was a
man. I had commonly a supply of these. I have
never smoked anything more noxious."

He chose to be rich by making his wants few, and
supplying them himself. In his travels, he used the
railroad only to get over so much country as was unim
portant to the present purpose, walking hundreds of
miles, avoiding taverns, buying a lodging in farmers'
and fishermen's houses, as cheaper, and more agreeable
to him, and because there he could better find the men
and the information he wanted.

There was somewhat military in his nature not to be
subdued, always manly and able, but rarely tender, as

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 11

if he did not feel himself except in opposition. He
wanted a fallacy to expose, a blunder to pillory, I may
say required a little sense of victory, a roll of the drum,
to call his powers into full exercise. It cost him noth
ing to say No ; indeed, he found it much easier than to
say Yes. It seemed as if his first instinct on hearing a
proposition was to controvert it, so impatient was he
of the limitations of our daily thought. This habit, of
course, is a little chilling to the social affections ; and
though the companion would in the end acquit him of
any malice or untruth, yet it mars conversation. Hence,
no equal companion stood in affectionate relations with
one so pure and guileless. " I love Henry," said one
of his friends, a but I cannot like him ; and as for taking
his arm, I should as soon think of taking the arm of an
elm-tree."

Yet, liermit and stoic as he was, he was really fond
of sympathy, and threw himself heartily and childlike
into the company of young people whom he loved, and
whom he delighted to entertain, as he only could, with
the varied and endless anecdotes of his experiences by
field and river. And he was always ready to lead a
huckleberry party or a search for chestnuts or grapes.
Talking, one day, of a public discourse, Henry remarked,
that whatever succeeded with the audience was bad. I
said, " Who would not like to write something which all
can read, like 'Robinson Crusoe'? and who does not
see with regret that his page is not solid with a right
materialistic treatment, which delights everybody ? "
Henry objected, of course, and vaunted the better lec
tures which reached only a few persons. But, at sup-

12 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

per, a young girl, understanding that he was to lecture
at the Lyceum, sharply asked him, " whether his lecture
would be a nice, interesting story, such as she wished to
hear, or whether it was one of those old philosophical
things that she did not care about." Henry turned to
her, and bethought himself, and, I saw, was trying to
believe that he had matter that might fit her and her
brother, who were to sit up and go to the lecture, if it
was a good one for them.

He was a speaker and actor of thp truth, — born
such, — and was ever running into dramatic situations
from this cause. In any circumstance, it interested all
bystanders to know what part Henry would take, and
what he would say ; and he did not disappoint expec
tation, but used an original judgment on each emer
gency. In 1845 he built himself a small framed house
on the shores of Walden Pond, and lived there two
years alone, a life of labor and study. This action was
quite native and fit for him. No one who knew him
would tax him with affectation. He was more unlike
his neighbors in his thought than in his action. As soon
as he had exhausted the advantages of that solitude, he
abandoned it. In 1847, not approving some uses to
which the public expenditure was applied, he refused to
pay his town tax, and was put in jail. A friend paid
the tax for him, and he was released. The like annoy
ance was threatened the next year. But, as his friends
paid the tax, notwithstanding his protest, I believe he
ceased to resist. No opposition or ridicule had any
weight with him. He coldly and fully stated his opinion
without affecting to believe that it was the opinion of

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 13

the company. It was of no consequence, if every one
present held the opposite opinion. On one occasion he
went to the University Library to procure some books.
The librarian refused to lend them. Mr. Thoreau re
paired to the President, who stated to him the rules and
usages, which permitted the loan of books to resident
graduates, to clergymen who were alumni, and to some
others resident within a circle of ten miles' radius from
the College. Mr. Thoreau explained to the President
that the railroad had destroyed the old scale of distances,
— that the library was useless, yes, and President and
College useless, on the terms of his rules, — that the
one benefit he owed to the College was its library, —
that, at this moment, not only his want of books was
imperative, but he wanted a large number of books, and
assured him that he, Thoreau, and not the librarian,
was the proper custodian of these. In short, the Presi
dent found the petitioner so formidable, and the rules
getting to look so ridiculous, that he ended by giving
him a privilege which in his hands proved unlimited
thereafter.

No truer American existed than Thoreau. His pref
erence of his country and condition was genuine, and
his aversation from English and European manners
and tastes almost reached contempt. He listened im
patiently to news or bon mots gleaned from London
circles ; and though he tried to be civil, these anecdotes
fatigued him. The men were all imitating each other,
and on a small mould. Why can they not live as far
apart as possible, and each be a man by himself ? What
he sought was the most energetic nature ; and he wished

14 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

to go to Oregon, not to London. "In every part of
Great Britain,*' he wrote in his diary, " are discovered
traces of the Romans, their funereal urns, their camps,
their roads, their dwellings. But New England, at
least, is not based on any Roman ruins. We have not
to lay the foundations of our houses on the ashes of a
former civilization."

But, idealist as he was, standing for abolition of sla
very, abolition of tariffs, almost for abolition of govern
ment, it is needless to say he found himself not only un
represented in actual politics, but almost equally opposed
to every class of reformers. Yet he paid the tribute
of his uniform respect to the Anti-Slavery Party. One
man, whose personal acquaintance he had formed, he
honored with exceptional regard. Before the first
friendly word had been spoken for Captain John
Brown, after the arrest, he sent notices to most houses
in Concord, that he would speak in a public hall on
the condition and character of John Brown, on Sunday
evening, and invited all people to come. The Repub
lican Committee, the Abolitionist Committee, sent him
word that it was premature and not advisable. He
replied, — "I did not send to you for advice, but to
announce that I am to speak." The hall was filled at
an early hour by people of all parties, and his earnest
eulogy of the hero was heard by all respectfully, by
many with a sympathy that surprised themselves.

It was said of Plotinus that he was ashamed of his
body, and 'tis very likely he had good reason for it, —
that his body was a bad servant, and he had not skill in
dealing with the material world, as happens often to

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 15

men of abstract intellect. But Mr. Thoreau was
equipped with a most adapted and serviceable body.
He was of short stature, firmly built, of light com
plexion, with strong, serious blue eyes, and a grave
aspect, — his face covered in the late years with a be
coming beard. His senses were acute, his frame well-
knit and hardy, his hands strong and skilful in the use
of tools. And there was a wonderful fitness of body
and mind. He could pace sixteen rods more accurately
than another man could measure them with rod and
chain. He could find his path in the woods at night,
he said, better by his feet than his eyes. He could esti
mate the measure of a tree very well by his eyes ; he
could estimate the weight of a calf or a pig, like a dealer.
From a box containing a bushel or more of loose pen
cils, he could take up with his hands fast enough just a
dozen pencils at every grasp. He was a good swimmer,
runner, skater, boatman, and would probably outwalk
most countrymen in a day's journey. And the relation
of body to mind was still finer than we have indicated.
He said he wanted every stride his legs made. The
length of his walk uniformly made the length of his
writing. If shut up in the house, he did not write at all.
He had a strong common sense, like that which Rose
Flammock, the weaver's daughter, iii Scott's romance,
commends in her father, as resembling a yardstick,
which, whilst it measures dowlas and diaper, can equally
well measure tapestry and cloth of gold. He had always
a new resource. When I was planting forest-trees, and
had procured half a peck of acorns, he said that only a
small portion of them would be sound, and proceeded

16 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

to examine them, and select the sound ones. But find
ing this took time, he said, " I think, if you put them all
into water, the good ones will sink ; " which experiment
we tried with success. He could plan a garden, or a
house, or a barn ; would have been competent to lead a
" Pacific Exploring Expedition"; could give judicious
counsel in the gravest private or public affairs.

He lived for the day, not cumbered and mortified by
his memory. If he brought you yesterday a new propo
sition, he would bring you to-day another not less revo
lutionary. A very industrious man, and setting, like
all highly organized men, a high value on his time, he
seemed the only man of leisure in town, always ready
for any excursion that promised well, or for conversation
prolonged into late hours. His trenchant sense was
never stopped by his rules of daily prudence, but was
always up to the new occasion. He liked and used the
simplest food, yet, when some one urged a vegetable diet,
Thoreau thought all diets a very small matter, saying
that " the man who shoots the buffalo lives better than
the man who boards at the Graham House." He said,
— " You can sleep near the railroad, and never be dis
turbed : Nature knows very well what sounds are worth
attending to, and has made up her mind not to hear the
railroad-whistle. But things respect the devout mind,
and a mental ecstasy was never interrupted." He noted,
what repeatedly befell him, that, after receiving from a
distance a rare plant, he would presently find the same
in his own haunts. And those pieces of luck which
happen only to good players happened to him. One
day, walking with a stranger, who inquired where In-

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 17

dian arrow-heads could be found, he replied, " Every
where," and, stooping forward, picked one on the instant
from the ground. At Mount Washington, in Tucker-
man's Ravine, Thoreau had a bad fall, and sprained his
foot. As he was in the act of getting up from his fall,
he saw for the first time the leaves of the Arnica
mollis.

His robust common sense, armed with stout hands,
keen perceptions, and strong will, cannot yet account
for the superiority which shone in his simple and hid
den life. I must add the cardinal fact, that there was
an excellent wisdom in him, proper to a rare class of
men, which showed him the material world as a means
and symbol. This discovery, which sometimes yields
to poets a certain casual and interrupted light, serving
for the ornament of their writing, was in him an un
sleeping insight ; and whatever faults or obstructions
of temperament might cloud it, he was not disobedient
to the heavenly vision. In his youth, he said, one day,
" The other world is all my art : my pencils will draw
no other ; my jack-knife will cut nothing else ; I do not
use it as a means." This was the muse and genius that
ruled his opinions, conversation, studies, work, and
course of life. > This made him a searching judge of
men. At first glance he measured his companion, and,
though insensible to some fine traits of culture, could
very well report his weight and calibre. And this
made the impression of genius which- his conversation
often gave.

He understood the matter in hand at a glance, and
saw the limitations and poverty of those he talked
2

18 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

with, so that nothing seemed concealed from such ter
rible eyes. I have repeatedly known young men of
sensibility converted in a moment to the belief that this
was the man they were in search of, the man of men,
who could tell them all they should do. His own deal
ing with them was never affectionate, but superior,
didactic, — scorning their petty ways, — very slowly
conceding, or not conceding at all, the promise of his
society at their houses, or even at his own. " Would
he not walk with them ? " " He did not know. There
was nothing so important to him as his walk ; he had
no walks to throw away on company." Visits were
offered him from respectful parties, but he declined
them. Admiring friends offered to carry him at their
own cost to the Yellow-Stone River, — to the "West
Indies, — to South America. But though nothing could
be more grave or considered than his refusals, they
remind one in quite new relations of that fop Brum-
mel's reply to the gentleman who offered him his car
riage in a shower, " But where will you ride, then ? " —
and what accusing silences, and what searching and
irresistible speeches, battering down all defences, his
companions can remember!

. Mr. Thoreau dedicated his genius with such entire
love to the fields, hills, and waters of his native town,
that he made them known and interesting to all reading
Americans, and to people over the sea. The river on
whose banks he -was born and died he knew from its
springs to its confluence with the Merrimack. He had
made summer and winter observations on it for many
years, and at every hour of the day and the night.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 19

The result of the recent survey of the "Water Com
missioners appointed by the State of Massachusetts he
had reached by his private experiments, several years
earlier. Every fact which occurs in the bed, on the
banks, or in the air over it ; the fishes, and their spawn
ing and nests, their manners, their food ; the shad-flies
which fill the air on a certain evening once a year, and
which are snapped at by the fishes so ravenously that
many of these die of repletion ; the conical heaps of
small stones on the river-shallows, one of which heaps
will sometimes overfill a cart, — these heaps the huge
nests of small fishes ; the birds which frequent the
stream, heron, duck, sheldrake, loon, osprey ; the snake,
musk-rat, otter, woodchuck, and fox, on the banks ; the
turtle, frog, hyla, and cricket, which make the banks
vocal, — were all known to him, and, as it were, towns
men and fellow-creatures ; so that he felt an absurdity
or violence in any narrative of one of these by itself
apart, and still more of its dimensions on an inch-rule,
or in the exhibition of its skeleton, or the specimen of
a squirrel or a bird in brandy. He liked to speak of
the manners of the river, as itself a lawful creature,
yet with exactness, and always to an observed fact.
As he knew the river, so the ponds in this region.

One of the weapons he used, more important than
microscope or alcohol-receiver to other investigators,
was a whim which grew on him by indulgence, yet
appeared in gravest statement, namely, of extolling his
awn town and neighborhood as the most favored centre
for natural observation. He remarked that the Flora
of Massachusetts embraced almost all the important

20 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

plants of America, — most of the oaks, most of the
willows, the best pines, the ash, the maple, the beech,
the nuts. He returned Kane's " Arctic Voyage " to a
friend of whom he had borrowed it, with the remark,
that " most of the phenomena noted might be observed
in Concord." He seemed a little envious of the Pole,
for the coincident sunrise and sunset, or five minutes'
day after six months : a splendid fact, which Annurs-
nuc had never afforded him. He found red snow in
one of his walks, and told me that he expected to find
yet the Victoria regia in Concord. He was the attor
ney of the indigenous plants, and owned to a preference
of the weeds to the imported plants, as of the Indian
to the civilized man, — and noticed, with pleasure, that
the willow bean-poles of his neighbor had grown more
than his beans. " See these weeds," he said, " which
have been hoed at by a million farmers all spring and
summer, and yet have prevailed, and just now come
out triumphant over all lanes, pastures, fields, and gar
dens, such is their vigor. We have insulted them with
low names, too, — as Pigweed, Wormwood, Chickweed,
Shad-Blossom." He says, "They have brave names,
too, — Ambrosia, Stellaria, Amelanchia, Amaranth,
etc."

I think his fancy for referring everything to the me
ridian of Concord did not grow out of any ignorance or
depreciation of other longitudes or latitudes, but was
rather a playful expression of his conviction of the
indifferency of all places, and that the best place for
each is where he stands. He expressed it once in this
wise : — "I think nothing is to be hoped from you, if

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 21

this bit of mould under your feet is not sweeter to you
to eat than any other in this world, or in any world."

The other weapon with which he conquered all ob
stacles in science was patience. He knew how to sit
immovable, a part of the rock he rested on, until the
bird, the reptile, the fish, which had retired from him,
should come back, and resume its habits, nay, moved by
curiosity, should come to him and watch him.

It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him.
He knew the country like a fox or a bird, and passed
through it as freely by paths of his own. He knew
every track in the snow or on the ground, and what
creature had taken this path before him. One must
submit abjectly to such a guide, and the reward was
great. Under his arm he carried an old music-book
to press plants ; in his pocket, his diary and pencil, a
spy-glass for birds, microscope, jack-knife, and twine.
He wore straw hat, stout shoes, strong gray trousers,
to brave shrub-oaks and smilax, and to climb a tree
for a hawk's or a squirrel's nest. He waded into the
pool for the water-plants, and his strong legs were no
insignificant part of his armor. On the day I speak of
he looked for the Menyanthes, detected it across the
wide pool, and, on examination of the florets, decided
that it had been in flower five days. He drew out of
his breast-pocket his diary, and read the names of all
the plants that should bloom on this day, whereof he
kept account as a banker when his notes fall due.
The Cypripedium not due till to-morrow. He thought,
that, if waked up from a trance, in this swamp, he
could tell by the plants what time of the year it was

22 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

within two days. The redstart was flying about, and
presently the fine grosbeaks, whose brilliant scarlet
makes the rash gazer wipe his eye, and whose fine
clear note Thoreau compared to that of a tanager which
has got rid of its hoarseness. Presently he heard a
note which he called that of the night-warbler, a bird
he had never identified, had been in search of twelve
years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act of
diving down into a tree or bush, and which it was vain
to seek ; the only bird that sings indifferently by night
and by day. I told him he must beware of finding and
booking it, lest life should have nothing more to show
him. He said, " What you seek in vain for, half your
life, one day you come full upon all the family at din
ner. You seek it like a dream, and as soon as you find
it you become its prey."

His interest in the flower or the bird lay very deep
in his mind, was connected with Nature, — and the
meaning of Nature was never attempted to be defined
by him. He would not offer a memoir of his observa
tions to the Natural History Society. " Why should I ?
To detach the description from its connections in my
mind would make it no longer true or valuable to me :
and they do not wish what belongs io it." His power
of observation seemed to indicate additional senses. He
saw as with microscope, heard as with ear-trumpet, and
his memory was a photographic register of all he saw
and heard. And yet none knew better than he that it
is not the fact that Imports, but the impression or effect
of the fact on your mind. Every fact lay in glory in
his mind, a type of the order and beauty of the whole.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 23

His determination on Natural History was organic.
He confessed that he sometimes felt like a hound or a
panther, and, if born among Indians, would have been
a fell hunter. But, restrained by his Massachusetts
culture, he played out the game in this mild form of
botany and ichthyology. His intimacy with animals
suggested what Thomas Fuller records of Butler the
apiologist, that " either he had told the bees things or
the bees had told him." Snakes coiled round his leg ;
the fishes swam into his hand, and he took them out of
the water ; he pulled the woodchuck out of its hole by
the tail, and took the foxes under his protection from
the hunters. Our naturalist had perfect magnanimity ;
he had no secrets : he would carry you to the heron's
haunt, or even to his most prized botanical swamp, —
possibly knowing mat you could never find it again, yet
willing to take his risks.

No college ever offered him a diploma, or a profes
sor's chair; no academy made him its corresponding
secretary, its discoverer, or even its member. Whether
these learned bodies feared the satire of his presence.-
Yet so much knowledge of Nature's secret and genius
few others possessed, none in a more large and religious
synthesis. For not a particle of respect had he to the
opinions of any man or body of men, but homage solely
to the truth itself; and as he discovered everywhere
among doctors some leaning of courtesy, it discredited
them. He grew to be revered and admired by his
townsmen, who had at first known him only as an
oddity. The farmers who employed him as a surveyor
soon discovered his rare accuracy and skill, his knowl-

24 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

edge of their lands, of trees, of birds, of Indian remains,
and the like, which enabled him to tell every farmer
more than he knew before of his own farm ; so that he
began to feel as if Mr. Thoreau had better rights in
his land than he. They felt, too, the superiority
of character which addressed all men with a native
authority.

Indian relics abound in Concord, — arrow-heads, stone
chisels, pestles, and fragments of pottery ; and on the
river-bank, large heaps of clam-shells and ashes mark
spots which the savages frequented. These, and every
circumstance touching the Indian, were important in his
eyes. His visits to Maine were chiefly for love of the
Indian. He had the satisfaction of seeing the manu
facture of the bark-canoe, as well as of trying his hand
in its management on the rapids. He was inquisitive
about the making of the stone arrow-head, and in his
last days charged a youth setting out for the Rocky
Mountains to find an Indian who could tell him that :
" It was well worth a visit to California to learn it."
•Occasionally, a small party of Penobscot Indians would
visit Concord, and pitch their tents for a few weeks in
summer on the river-bank. He failed not to make
acquaintance with the best of them ; though he well
knew that asking questions of Indians is like catechizing
beavers and rabbits. In his last visit to Maine he
had great satisfaction from Joseph Polis, an intelligent
Indian of Oldtown, who was his guide for some weeks.

He was equally interested in every natural fact. The
depth of his perception found likeness of law through
out Nature, and I know not any genius who so swiftly

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 25

inferred universal law from the single fact. He was no
pedant of a department. His eye was open to beauty,
and his ear to music. He found these, not in rare con
ditions, but wheresoever he went. He thought the best
of music was in single strains ; and he found poetic sug
gestion in the humming of the telegraph-wire.

His poetry might be bad or good ; he no doubt wanted
a lyric facility and technical skill ; but he had the source
of poetry in his spiritual perception. He was a good
reader and critic, and his judgment on poetry was to the
ground of it. He could not be deceived as to the pres
ence or absence of the poetic element in any compo
sition, and his thirst for this made him negligent and
perhaps scornful of superficial graces. He would pass
by many delicate rhythms, but he would have detected
every live stanza or line in a volume, and knew very
well where to find an equal poetic charm in prose. He
was so enamored of the spiritual beauty that he held all
actual written poems in very light esteem in the com
parison. He admired JEschylus and Pindar ; but, when
some one was commending them, he said that "^Eschy-
lus and the Greeks, in describing Apollo and Orpheus,
had given no song, or 110 good one. They ought not to
have moved trees, but to have chanted to the gods such
a hymn as would have sung all their old ideas out of
their heads, and new ones in." His own verses are
often rude and defective. The gold does not yet run
pure, is drossy and crude. The thyme and marjoram
are not yet honey. But if he want lyric fineness and
technical merits, if he have not the poetic temperament,
he never lacks the causal thought, showing that his

26 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

genius was better than his talent. He knew the worth
of the Imagination for the uplifting and consolation of
human life, atfd liked to throw every thought into a,
symbol. The fact you tell is of no value, but only the
impression. For this reason his presence was poetic,
always piqued the curiosity to know more deeply the
secrets of his mind. He had many reserves, an unwill
ingness to exhibit to profane eyes what was still sacred
in his own, and knew well how to throw a poetic
veil over his experience. All readers of "Walden"
will remember his mythical record of his disappoint
ments : —

" I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle
dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travel
lers I have spoken concerning them, describing their
tracks, and what calls they answered to. I have met
one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of
the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a
cloud ; and they seemed as anxious to recover them as
if they had lost them themselves." *

His riddles were worth the reading, and I confide,
that, if at any time I do not understand the expression,
it is yet just. Such was the wealth of his truth that it
was not worth his while to use words in vain. His
poem entitled " Sympathy " reveals the tenderness un
der that triple steel of stoicism, and the intellectual sub-
tilty it could animate. His classic poem on " Smoke "
suggests Simonides, but is better than any poem of
Simonides. His biography is in his verses. His habit
ual thought makes all his poetry a hymn. to the Cause
* "Walden," p. 20.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 27

of causes, the Spirit which vivifies and controls his
own.

" I hearing get. who had but ears,
And sight, who had but eyes before ;
I moments live, who lived but years,
And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore."

And still more in these religious lines : —

" Now chiefly is my natal hour,
And only now my prime of life ;
I will not doubt the love untold,
Which not my worth or want hath bought,
Which wooed me young, and wooes me old,
And to this evening hath me brought."

Whilst he used in his writings a certain petulance of
remark in reference to churches or churchmen, he was a
person of a rare, tender, and absolute religion, a person
incapable of any profanation, by act or by thought. Of
course, the same isolation which belonged to his original
thinking and living detached him from the social relig
ious forms. This is neither to be censured nor regretted.
Aristotle long ago explained it, when he said, " One
who surpasses his fellow-citizens in virtue is no longer
a part of the city. Their law is not for him, since he
is a law to himself."

Thoreau was sincerity itself, and might fortify the
convictions of prophets in the ethical laws by his holy
living. It was an affirmative experience which refused
to be set aside. A truth-speaker he, capable of the
most deep and strict conversation ; a physician to the

28 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

wounds of any soul; a friend, knowing not only the
secret of friendship, but almost worshipped by those
few persons who resorted to him as their confessor and
prophet, and knew the deep value of his mind and great
heart. He thought that without religion or devotion of
some kind nothing great was ever accomplished : and he
thought that the bigoted sectarian had better bear this
in mind.

His virtues, of course, sometimes ran into extremes.
It was easy to trace to the inexorable demand on all for
exact truth that austerity which made this willing her
mit more solitary even than he wished. Plimself of a
perfect probity, he required not less of others. He had
a disgust at crime, and no worldly success could cover it.
He detected paltering as readily in dignified and pros
perous persons as in beggars, and with equal scorn.
Such dangerous frankness was in his dealing that his
admirers called him " that terrible Thoreau," as if he
spoke when silent, and was still present when he had
departed. I think the severity of his ideal interfered to
deprive him of a healthy sufficiency of human society.

The habit of a realist to find things the reverse of
their appearance inclined him to put every statement in
a paradox. A certain habit of antagonism defaced his
earlier writings, — a trick of rhetoric not quite out
grown in his later, of substituting for the obvious word
and thought its diametrical opposite. He praised wild
mountains and winter forests for their domestic air, in
snow and ice he would find sultriness, and commended
the wilderness for resembling Home and Paris. "It
was so dry, that you might call it wet."

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 29

The tendency to magnify the moment, to read all the
laws of Nature in the one object or one combination
under your eye, is of course comic to those who do not
share the philosopher's perception of identity. To him
there was no such thing as size. The pond was a small
ocean ; the Atlantic, a large Walden Pond. He re
ferred every minute fact to cosmical laws. Though he
meant to be just, he seemed haunted by a certain
chronic assumption that the science of the day pretend
ed completeness, and he had just found out that the
savans had neglected to discriminate a particular botani
cal variety, had failed to describe the seeds or count the
sepals. " That is to say," we replied, " the blockheads
were not born in Concord ; but who said they were ?
It was their unspeakable misfortune to be born in Lon
don, or Paris, or Rome ; but, poor fellows, they did
what they could, considering that they never saw Bate-
man's Pond, or Nine-Acre Corner, or Becky-Stow's
Swamp. Besides, what were you sent into the world
for, but to add this observation ? "

Had his genius been only contemplative, he had been
fitted to his life, but with his energy and practical abil
ity he seemed born for great enterprise and for com
mand ; and I so much regret the loss of his rare pow
ers of action, that I cannot help counting it a fault in
him that he had no ambition. Wanting this, instead of
engineering for all America, he was the captain of a
huckleberry party. Pounding beans is good to the end
of pounding empires one of these days ; but if, at the
end of years, it is still only beans !

But these foibles, real or apparent, were fast vanish-

30 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

ing in the incessant growth of a spirit so robust and
wise, and which effaced its defeats with new triumphs.
His study of Nature was a perpetual ornament to him,
and inspired his friends with curiosity to sec the world
through his eyes, and to hear his adventures. They
possessed every kind of interest.

He had many elegances of his own, whilst he scoffed
at conventional elegance. Thus, he could not bear to
hear the sound of his own steps, the grit of gravel ; and
therefore never willingly walked in the road, but in the
grass, on mountains and in woods. His senses were
acute, and he remarked that by night every dwelling-
house gives out bad air, like a slaughter-house. He
liked the pure fragrance of melilot. He honored cer
tain plants with special regard, and, over all, the pond-
lily, — then, the gentian, and the Mikania scandens, and
"•life-everlasting," and a bass-tree which he visited
every year when it bloomed, in the middle of July. He
thought the scent a more oracular inquisition than the
sight, — more oracular and trustworthy. The scent, of
course, reveals what is concealed from the other senses.
By it he detected earthiness. He delighted in echoes,
and said they were almost the only kind of kindred
voices that he heard. He loved Nature so well, was so
happy in her solitude, that he became very jealous of
cities, and the sad work which their refinements and
artifices made with man and his dwelling. The axe
was always destroying his forest. " Thank God," he
said, " they cannot cut down the clouds ! " " All kinds
of figures are drawn on the blue ground with this
fibrous white paint."

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 31

I subjoin a few sentences taken from his unpublished
manuscripts, not only as records of his thought and feel
ing, but for their power of description and literary
excellence.

" Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when
you find a trout in the milk."

" The chub is a soft fish, and tastes like boiled brown
paper salted."

"The youth gets together his materials to build a
bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple
on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man con
cludes to built a wood-shed with them."

" The locust z-ing."

" Devil's-needles zigzagging along the Nut-Meadow
brook."

" Sugar is not so sweet to the palate as sound to the
healthy ear."

"I put on some hemlock-boughs, and the rich salt
crackling of their leaves was like mustard to the ear,
the , crackling of uncountable regiments. Dead trees
love the fire."

" The bluebird carries the sky on his back."

" The tanager flies through the green foliage as if it
would ignite the leaves."

" If I wish for a horse-hair for my compass-sight, I
must go to the stable ; but the hair-bird, with her sharp
eyes, goes to the road."

" Immortal water, alive even to the superficies."
. " Fire is the most tolerable third party."

" Nature made ferns for pure leaves, to show what
she could do in that line."

32 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

" No tree has so fair a bole and so handsome an in
step as the beech."

" How did these beautiful rainbow-tints get into the
shell of the fresh-water clam, buried in the mud at the
bottom of our dark river ? "

" Hard are the times when the infant's shoes are
second-foot."

" We are strictly confined to our men to whom we
give liberty."

" Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism
may comparatively be popular with God himself."

" Of what significance the things you can forget ? A
little thought is sexton to all the world."

" How can we expect a harvest of thought who have
not had a seed-time of character ? "

" Only he can be trusted with gifts who can present a
face of bronze to expectations."

u I ask to be melted. You can only ask of the metals
that they be tender to the fire that melts them. To
nought else can they be tender."

There is a flower known to botanists, one of the same
genus with our summer plant called " Life-Everlasting,"
a Gnaphalium like that, which grows on the most inac
cessible cliffs of the Tyrolese mountains, where the
chamois dare hardly venture, and which the hunter,
tempted by its beauty, and by his love, (for it is im
mensely valued by the Swiss maidens,) climbs the cliffs
to gather, and is sometimes found dead at the foot, with
the flower in his hand. It is called by botanists the
Gnaphalium leontopodiurn, but by the Swiss Edelweisse,

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 33

which signifies Noble Purity. Thoreau seemed to me
living in the hope to gather this plant, which belonged
to him of right. The scale on which his studies pro
ceeded was so large as to require longevity, and we
were the less prepared for his sudden disappearance.
The country knows not yet, or in the least part, how
great a son it has lost. It seems an injury that he
should leave in the midst his broken task, which none
else can finish, — a kind of indignity to so noble a soul,
that it should depart out of Nature before yet- he has
been really shown to his peers for what he is. But he,
at least, is content. His soul was made for the noblest
society ; he had in a short life exhausted the capabili
ties of this world ; wherever there is knowledge, wher
ever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will
find a home.

EXCURSIONS.

NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS*

[1842.]

BOOKS of natural history make the most
cheerful winter reading. I read in Audubon
with a thrill of delight, when the snow covers
the ground, of the magnolia, and the Florida
keys, and their warm sea-breezes ; of the fence-
rail, and the cotton-tree, and the migrations of
the rice-bird ; of the breaking up of winter in
Labrador, and the melting of the snow on the
forks of the Missouri ; and owe an accession of
health to these reminiscences of luxuriant nature.

Within the circuit of this plodding life,

There enter moments of an azure hue,

Untarnished fair as is the violet

Or anemone, when the spring strews them

By some meandering rivulet, which make

The best philosophy untrue that aims

But to console man for his grievances.

I have remembered when the winter came,

High in my chamber in the frosty nights,

When in the still light of the cheerful moon,

* Reports — on the Fishes, Reptiles, and Birds ; the Herbaceous Plants
and Quadrupeds ; the Insects Injurious to Vegetation ; and the Inver
tebrate Animals of Massachusetts. Published agreeably to an Order
of the Legislature, by the Commissioners on the Zoological and Bo
tanical Survey of the State.

38 NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS.

On every twig and rail and jutting spout,
The icy spears were adding to their length
Against the arrows of the coming sun,
How in the shimmering noon of summer past
Some unrecorded beam slanted across
The upland pastures where the Johnswort grew ;
Or heard, amid the verdure of my mind.
The bee's long smothered hum, on the blue flag
Loitering amidst the mead ; or busy rill,
Which now through all its course stands still and dumb
Its own memorial, — purling at its play
Along the slopes, and through the meadows next,
Until its youthful sound was hushed at last
In the staid current of the lowland stream ;
Or seen the furrows shine but late upturned,
And where the fieldfare followed in the rear,
When all the fields around lay bound and hoar
Beneath a thick integument of snow.
So by God's cheap economy made rich
To go upon my winter's task again.
^

I am singularly refreshed in winter when I
hear of service-berries, poke-weed, juniper. Is
not heaven made up of these cheap summer
glories ? There is a singular health in those
words, Labrador and East Main, which no de
sponding creed recognizes. How much more
than Federal are these States. If there were no
other vicissitudes than the seasons, our interest
would never tire. Much more is adoing than
Congress wots of. What journal do the per
simmon and the buckeye keep, and the sharp-
shinned hawk ? What is transpiring from sum-

NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS. 39

mer to winter in the Carolinas, and the Great
Pine Forest, and the Valley of the Mohawk?
The merely political aspect of the land is never
very cheering ; men are degraded when consid
ered as the members of a political organization.
On this side all lands present only the symptoms
of decay. I see but Bunker Hill and Sing-Sing,
the District of Columbia and Sullivan's Island,
with a few avenues connecting them. But pal
try are they all beside one blast of the, east or
the south wind which blows over them.

In society you will not find health, but in
nature. Unless our feet at least stood in the
midst of nature, all our faces would be pale and
livid. Society is always diseased, and the best
is the most so. There is no scent in it so whole
some as that of the pines, nor any fragrance so
penetrating and restorative as the life-everlasting
in high pastures. I would keep some book of
natural history always by me as a sort of elixir,
the reading of which should restore the tone of
the system. To the sick, indeed, nature is sick,
but to the well, a fountain of health. To him
who contemplates a trait of natural beauty no
harm nor disappointment can come. The doc
trines of despair, of spiritual or political tyranny
or servitude, were never taught by such as shared
the serenity of nature. Surely good courage
will not flag here on the Atlantic border, as

40 NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS.

long as we are flanked by the Fur Countries.
There is enough in that sound to cheer one
under any circumstances. The spruce, the hem
lock, and the pine will not countenance despair.
Methinks some creeds in vestries and churches
do forget the hunter wrapped in furs by the
Great Slave Lake, and that the Esquimaux
sledges are drawn by dogs, and in the twilight
of the northern night, the hunter does not give
over to follow the seal and walrus on the ice.
They are of sick and diseased imaginations who
would toll the world's knell so soon. Cannot
these sedentary sects do better than prepare the
shrouds and write the epitaphs of those other
busy living men ? The practical faith of all men
belies the preacher's consolation. What is any
man's discourse to me, if I am not sensible of
something in it as steady and cheery as the
creak of crickets ? In it the woods must be re
lieved against the sky. Men tire me when I am
not constantly greeted and refreshed as by the
flux of sparkling streams. Surely joy is the con
dition of life. Think of the young fry that leap
in ponds, the myriads of insects ushered into
being on a summer evening, the incessant note
of the hyla with which the woods ring in the
spring, the nonchalance of the butterfly carrying
accident and change painted in a thousand hues
upon its wings, or the brook minnow stoutly

NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS. 41

stemming the current, the lustre of whose scales
worn bright by the attrition is reflected upon
the bank.

We fancy that this din of religion, literature,
and philosophy, which is heard in pulpits, lyce-
ums, and parlors, vibrates through the universe,
and is as catholic a sound as the creaking of
the earth's axle ; but if a man sleep soundly, he
will forget it all between sunset and dawn. It
is the three-inch swing of a pendulum in a cup
board, which the great pulse of nature vibrates
by and through each instant. When we lift our
eyelids and open our ears, it disappears with
smoke and rattle like the cars on a railroad.
When I detect a beauty in any of the recesses
of nature, I am reminded, by the serene and
retired spirit in which it requires to be contem
plated, of the inexpressible privacy of a life, —
how silent and unambitious it is. The beauty
there is in mosses must be considered from the
holiest, quietest nook. What an admirable train
ing is science for the more active warfare of life.
Indeed, the unchallenged bravery, which these
studies imply, is far more impressive than the
trumpeted valor of the warrior. I am- pleased
to learn that Thales was up and stirring by
night not unfrequently, as his astronomical dis
coveries prove. Linnaeus, setting out for Lap
land, surveys his " comb " and " spare shirt,"

42 NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS.

" leathern breeches " and " gauze cap to keep off
gnats," with as much complacency as Bonaparte
a park of artillery for the Russian campaign.
The quiet bravery of the man is admirable. His
eye is to take in fish, flower, and bird, quadru
ped and biped. Science is always brave, for to
know, is to know good ; doubt and danger quail
before her eye. What the coward overlooks in
his hurry, she calmly scrutinizes, breaking ground
like a pioneer for the array of arts that follow in
her train. But cowardice is unscientific; for
there cannot be a science of ignorance. There
may be a science of bravery, for that advances ;
but a retreat is rarely well conducted ; if it is,
then is it an orderly advance in the face of cir
cumstances.

But to draw a little nearer to our promised
topics. Entomology extends the limits of being
in a new direction, so that I walk in nature with
a sense of greater space and freedom. It sug
gests besides, that the universe is not rough-
hewn, but perfect in its details. Nature will
bear the closest inspection ; she invites us to lay
our eye level with the smallest leaf, and take an
insect view of its plain. She has no interstices ;
every part is full of life. I explore, too, with
pleasure, the sources of the myriad sounds which
crowd the summer noon, and which seem the
very grain and stuff of which eternity is made.

NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS. 43

Who does not remember the shrill roll-call of
the harvest fly ? There were ears for these
sounds in Greece long ago, as Anacreon's ode
will show.

" We pronounce thee happy, Cicada,
For on the tops of the trees,
Drinking a little dew,
Like any king thou singest,
For thine are they all,
Whatever thou seest in the fields,
And whatever the woods bear.
Thou art the friend of the husbandmen,
In no respect injuring any one ;
And thou art honored among men,
Sweet prophet of summer.
The Muses love thee,
And Phoebus himself loves thee,
And has given thee a shrill song ;
Age does not wrack thee,
Thou skilful, earthborn, song-loving,
Unsufferlng, bloodless one ;
Almost thou art like the gods."

In the autumn days, the creaking of crickets
is heard at noon over all the land, and as in
summer they are heard chiefly at nightfall, so
then by their incessant chirp they usher in the
evening of the year. Nor can all the vanities
that vex the world alter one whit the measure
that night has chosen. Every pulse-beat is in
exact time with the cricket's chant and the tick-

44 NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS.

ings of the deathwatch in the wall. Alternate
with these if you can.

About two hundred and eighty birds either
reside permanently in the State, or spend the
summer only, or make us a passing visit. Those
which spend the winter with us have obtained
our warmest sympathy. The nut-hatch and
chicadee flitting in company through the dells
of the wood, the one harshly scolding at the
intruder, the other with a faint lisping note en
ticing him on ; the jay screaming in the or
chard; the crow cawing in unison with the
storm ; the partridge, like a russet link extended
over from autumn to spring, preserving un
broken the chain of summers; the hawk with
warrior-like firmness abiding the blasts of win
ter; the robin* and lark lurking by warm springs
in the woods ; the familiar snow-bird culling a
few seeds in the garden, or a few crumbs in
the yard; and occasionally the shrike, with heed
less and unfrozen melody bringing back summer
again ; —

* A white robin and a white quail have occasionally been seen. It
is mentioned in Audubon as remarkable that the nest of a robin
should be found on the ground; but this bird seems to be less partic
ular than most in the choice of a building spot. I have seen its nest
placed under the thatched roof of a deserted barn, and in one in
stance, where the adjacent country was nearly destitute of trees,
together with two of the phoebe, upon the end of a board in the loft
of a saw-mill, but a few feet from the saw, which vibrated several
inches with the motion of the machinery.

NATURAL HISTOUY OF MASSACHUSETTS. 45

His steady sails lie never furls

At any time o' year,

And perching now on Winter's curls,

He whistles in his ear.

As the spring advances, and the ice is melting
in the river, our earliest and straggling visitors
make their appearance. Again does the old
Teian poet sing, as well for New England as for
Greece, in the

RETURN OF SPRING.

" Behold, how Spring appearing,
The Graces send forth roses ;
Behold, how the wave of the sea
Is made smooth by the calm ;
Behold, how the duck dives ;
Behold, how the crane travels ;
And Titan shines constantly bright.
The shadows of the clouds are moving ;
The works of man shine;
The earth puts forth fruits ;
The fruit of the olive puts forth.
The cup of Bacchus is crowned,
Along the leaves, along the branches,
The fruit, bending them down, flourishes."

The ducks alight at this season in the still
water, in company with the gulls, which do
not fail to improve an east wind to visit our
meadows, and swim about by twos and threes,
pluming the*nselves, and diving to peck at the
root of the lily, and the cranberries which the

46 NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS.

frost has not loosened. The first flock of geese
is seen beating to north, in long harrows and
waving lines; the gingle of the song-sparrow
salutes us from the shrubs and fences ; the plain
tive note of the lark comes clear and sweet from
the meadow; and the bluebird, like an azure ray,
glances past us in our walk. The fish-hawk,
too, is occasionally seen at this season sailing
majestically over the water, and he who has
once observed it will not soon forget the majesty
of its flight. It sails the air like a ship of the
line, worthy to struggle with the elements, fall
ing back from time to time like a ship on its
beam ends, and holding its talons up as if ready
for the arrows, in the attitude of the national
bird. It is a great presence, as of the master of
river and forest. Its eye would not quail before
the owner of the soil, but make him feel like an
intruder on its domains. And then its retreat,
sailing so steadily away, is a kind of advance.
I have by me one of a pair of ospreys, which
have for some years fished in this vicinity, shot
by a neighboring pond, measuring more than
two feet in length, and six in the stretch of its
wings. Nuttall mentions that " The ancients,
particularly Aristotle, pretended that the ospreys
taught their young to gaze at the sun, and those
who were unable to do so were destroyed. Lin
naeus even believed, on ancient authority, that

NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS. 47

one of the feet of this bird had all the toes di
vided, while the other was partly webbed, so
that it could swim with one foot, and grasp a
fish with the other." Bat that educated eye is
now dim, and those talons are nerveless. Its
shrill scream seems yet to linger in its throat,
and the roar of the sea in its wings. There is
the tyranny of Jove in its claws, and his wrath
in the erectile feathers of the head and neck. It
reminds me of the Argonautic expedition, and
would inspire the dullest to take flight over Par
nassus.

The booming of the bittern, described by
Goldsmith and Nuttall, is frequently heard in
our fens, in the morning and evening, sounding
like a pump, or the chopping of wood in a frosty
morning in some distant farm-yard. The man
ner in which this sound is produced I have not
seen anywhere described. On one occasion, the
bird has been seen by one of my neighbors to
thrust its bill into the water, and suck up as
much as it could hold, then raising its head, it
pumped it out again with four or five heaves of
the neck, throwing it two or three feet, and
making the sound each time.

At length the summer's eternity is ushered in
by the cackle of the flicker among the oaks on
the hill-side, and a new dynasty begins with
calm security.

48 NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS.

In May and June the woodland quire is in
full tune, and given the immense spaces of hol
low air, and this curious human ear, one does
not see how the void could be better filled.

Each summer sound
Is a summer round.

As the season advances, and those birds which
make us but a passing visit depart, the woods
become silent again, and but few feathers ruffle
the drowsy air. But the solitary rambler may
still find a response and expression for every
mood in the depths of the wood.

Sometimes I hear the veery's* clarion,

Or brazen trump of the impatient jay,

And in secluded woods the chicadee

Doles out her scanty notes, which sing the praise

Of heroes, and set forth the loveliness

Of virtue evermore.

The phcebe still sings in harmony with the
sultry weather by the brink of the pond, nor are
the desultory hours of noon in the midst of the
village without their minstrel.

* This bird, which is so well described by Nuttall, but is appar
ently unknown by the author of the Report, is one of the most con-
mon in the woods in this vicinity, and in Cambridge I have heard
the college yard ring with its trill. The boys call it " jomcfc," from
the sound of its querulous and chiding note, as it flits near the trav
eller through the underwood. The cowbird's egg is occasionally
found in its nest, as mentioned by Audubon.

NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS. 49

Upon the lofty elm-tree sprays

The vireo rings the changes sweet,

During the trivial summer days,

Striving to lift our thoughts above the street.

With the autumn begins in some measure a
new spring. The plover is heard whistling high
in the air over the dry pastures, the finches flit
from tree to tree, the bobolinks and flickers fly
in flocks, and the goldfinch rides on the earliest
blast, like a winged hyla peeping amid the rustle
of the leaves. The crows, too, begin now to
congregate ; you may stand and count them as
they fly low and straggling over the landscape,
singly or by twos and threes, at intervals of half
a mile, until a hundred have passed.

I have seen it suggested somewhere that the
crow was brought to this country by the white
man ; but I shall as soon believe that the white
man planted these pines and hemlocks. He is
no spaniel to follow our steps ; but rather flits
about the clearings like the dusky spirit of the
Indian, reminding me oftener of Philip and
Powhatan, than of Winthrop and Smith. He
is a relic of the dark ages. By just so slight, by
just so lasting a tenure does superstition hold
the world ever; there is the rook in England,
and the crow in New England.

Thou dusky spirit of the wood,
Bird of an ancient brood,

4

50 NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS.

Flitting thy lonely way,
A meteor in the summer's day,
From wood to wood, from hill to hill,
Low over forest, field, and rill,
What wouldst thou say ?
Why shouldst thou haunt the day ?
What makes thy melancholy float ?
What bravery inspires thy throat,
And bears thee up above the clouds,
Over desponding human crowds,
* Which far below
Lay thy haunts low ?

The late walker or sailor, in the October eve
nings, may hear the murmurings of the snipe,
circling over the meadows, the most spirit-like
sound in nature; and still later in the autumn,
when the frosts have tinged the leaves, a solitary
loon pays a visit to our retired ponds, where he
may lurk undisturbed till the season of moulting
is passed, making the woods ring with his wild
laughter. This bird, the Great Northern Diver,
well deserves its name ; for when pursued with
a boat, it will dive, and swim like a fish under
water, for sixty rods or more, as fast as a boat
can be paddled, and its pursuer, if he would dis
cover his game again, must put his ear to the
surface to hear where it comes up. When it
comes to the surface, it throws the water off
with one ,shake of its wings, and calmly swims
about until again disturbed.

NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS. 51

These are the sights and sounds which reach
our senses oftenest during the year. But some
times one hears a quite new note, which has for
background other Carolinas and Mexicos than
the books describe, and learns that his ornithol
ogy has done him no service.

It appears from the Report that there are
about forty quadrupeds belonging to the State,
and among these one is glad to hear of a few
bears, wolves, lynxes, and wildcats.

When our river overflows its banks in the
spring, the wind from the meadows is laden
with a strong scent of musk, and by its fresh
ness advertises me of an unexplored wildness.
Those backwoods are not far off then. I am
affected by the sight of the cabins of the musk-
rat, made of mud and grass, and raised three or
four feet along the river, as when I read of the
barrows of Asia. The musk-rat is the beaver
of the settled States. Their number has even
increased within a few years in this vicinity.
Among the rivers which empty into the Merri-
mack, the Concord is known to the boatmen as
a dead stream. The Indians are said to have
called it Musketaquid, or Prairie River. Its cur
rent being much more sluggish, and its water
more muddy than the rest, it abounds more in fish
and game of every kind. According to the His
tory of the town, " The fur-trade was here once

52 NATURAI/HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS.

very important As early as 1641, a company
was formed in the colony, of which Major Wil-
lard of Concord was superintendent, and had
the exclusive right to trade with the Indians in
furs and other articles; and for this right they
were obliged to pay into the public treasury one
twentieth of all the furs they obtained." There
are trappers in our midst still, as well as on the
streams of the far West, who night and morning
go the* round of their traps, without fear of the
Indian. One of these takes from one hundred
and fifty to two hundred musk-rats in a year,
and even thirty-six have been shot by one man
in a day. Their fur, which is not nearly as val
uable as formerly, is in good condition in the
winter and spring only ; and upon the breaking
up of the ice, when they are driven out of their
holes by the water, the greatest number is shot
from boats, either swimming or resting on their
stools, or slight supports of grass and reeds, by
the side of the stream. Though they exhibit
considerable cunning at other times, they are
easily taken in a trap, which has only to be
placed in their holes, or wherever they frequent,
without any bait being used, though it is some
times rubbed with their musk. In the winter
the hunter cuts holes in the ice, and shoots them
when they come to the surface. Their burrows
are usually in the high banks of the river, with

NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS. 53

the entrance under water, and rising within to
above the level of high water. Sometimes their
nests, composed of dried meadow grass and
flags, may be discovered where the bank is low
and spongy, by the yielding of the ground under
the feet. They have from three to seven or
eight young in the spring.

Frequently, in the morning or evening, a long
ripple is seen in the still water, where a musk-
rat is crossing the stream, with only its nose
above the surface, and sometimes a green bough
in its mouth to build its house with. When it
finds itself observed, it will dive and swim five
or six rods under water, and at length conceal
itself in its hole, or the weeds. It will remain
under water for ten minutes at a time, and on
one occasion has been seen, when undisturbed,
to form an air- bubble under the ice, which con
tracted and expanded as it breathed at leisure.
When it suspects danger on shore, it will stand
erect like a squirrel, and survey its neighborhood
for several minutes, without moving.

In the fall, if a meadow intervene between
their burrows and the stream, they erect cabins
of mud and grass, three or four feet high, near
its edge. These are not their breeding-places,
though young are sometimes found in them in
late freshets, but rather their hunting-lodges, to
which they resort in the winter with their food,
and for shelter. Their food consists chiefly of

54 NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS.

flags and fresh-water muscles, the shells of the
latter being left in large quantities around their
lodges in the spring.

The Penobscot Indian wears the entire skin
of a musk-rat, with the legs and tail dangling,
and the head caught under his girdle, for a
pouch, into which he puts his fishing tackle,
and essences to scent his traps with,

The bear, wolf, lynx, wildcat, deer, beaver, and
marten, have disappeared ; the otter is rarely if
ever seen here at present ; and the mink is less
common than formerly.

Perhaps of ah1 our untamed quadrupeds, the
fox has obtained the widest and most famil
iar reputation, from the time of Pilpay and
^Esop to the present day. His recent tracks
still give variety to a winter's walk. I tread in
the steps of the fox that has gone before me by
some hours, or which perhaps I have started,
with such a tiptoe of expectation, as if I were
on the trail of the Spirit itself which resides in
the wood, and expected soon to catch it in its
lair. I am curious to know what has deter
mined its graceful curvatures, and how surely
they were coincident with the fluctuations of
some mind. I know which way a mind wended,
what horizon it faced, by the setting of these
tracks, and whether it moved slowly or rapidly,
by their greater or less intervals and distinct
ness ; for the swiftest step leaves yet a lasting

NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS. 55

trace. Sometimes you will see the trails of
many together, and where they have gambolled
and gone through a hundred evolutions, which
testify to a singular listlessness and leisure in
nature.

When I see a fox run across the pond on the
snow, with the carelessness of freedom, or at in
tervals trace his course in the sunshine along
the ridge of a hill, I give up to him sun and
earth as to their true proprietor. He does not
go in the sun, but it seems to follow him, and
there is a visible sympathy between him and it.
Sometimes, when the snow lies light, and but
five or six inches deep, you may give chase and
come up with one on foot. In such a case he
will show a remarkable presence of mind, choos
ing only the safest direction, though he may lose
ground by it. Notwithstanding his fright, he
will take no step which is not beautiful. His
pace is a sort of leopard canter, as if he were
in nowise impeded by the snow, but were hus
banding his strength all the while. When the
ground is uneven, the course is a series of grace
ful curves, conforming to the shape of the sur
face. He runs as though there were not a bone
in his back. Occasionally dropping his muzzle
to the ground for a rod or two, and then tossing
his head aloft, when satisfied of his course.
When he comes to a declivity, he will put his

56 NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS.

forefeet together, and slide swiftly down it, shov
ing the snow before him. He treads so softly
that you would hardly hear it from any near
ness, and yet with such expression that it would
not be quite inaudible at any distance.

Of fishes, seventy-five genera and one hun
dred and seven species are described in the Re
port. The fisherman will be startled to learn
that there are but about a dozen kinds in the
ponds and streams of any inland town ; and
almost nothing is known of their habits. Only
their names and residence make one love fishes.
I would know even the number of their fin-rays,
and how many scales compose the lateral line.
I am the wiser in respect to all knowledges, and
the better qualified for all fortunes, for knowing
that there is a minnow in the brook. Methinks
I have need even of his sympathy, and to be his
fellow in a degree.

I have experienced such simple delight in the
trivial matters of fishing and sporting, formerly,
as might have inspired the muse of Homer or
Shakspeare; and now, when I turn the pages
and ponder the plates of the Angler's Souvenir,
I am fain to exclaim, —

" Can these things be,
And overcome us like a summer's cloud ? "

Next to nature, it seems as if man's actions

NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS. 57

were the most natural, they so gently accord
with her. The small seines of flax stretched-
across the shallow and transparent parts of our
river, are no more intrusion than the cobweb in
the sun. I stay my boat in midcurrent, and
look down in the sunny water to see the civil
meshes of his nets, and wonder how the bluster
ing people of the town could have done this
elvish work. The twine looks like a new river
weed, and is to the river as a beautiful me
mento of man's presence in nature, discovered
as silently and delicately as a footprint in the
sand.

When the ice is covered with snow, I do not
suspect the wealth under my feet ; that there is
as good as a mine under me wherever I go.
How many pickerel are poised on easy fin fath
oms below the loaded wain. The revolution of
the seasons must be a curious phenomenon to
them. At length the sun and wind brush aside
their curtain, and they see the heavens again.

Early in the spring, after the ice has melted,
is the time for spearing fish. Suddenly the
wind shifts from northeast and east to west and
south, and every icicle, which has tinkled on the
meadow grass so long, trickles down its stem,
and seeks its level unerringly with a million
comrades. The steam curls up from every roof
and fence.

58 NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS.

I see the civil sun drying earth's tears,
Her tears of joy, which only faster flow.

In the brooks is heard the slight grating
sound of small cakes of ice, floating with vari
ous speed, full of content and promise, and
where the water gurgles under a natural bridge,
you may hear these hasty rafts hold conver
sation in an undertone. Every rill is a chan
nel for the juices of the meadow. In the
ponds the ice cracks with a merry and inspirit
ing din, and down the larger streams is whirled
grating hoarsely, and crashing its way along,
which was so lately a highway for the wood
man's team and the fox, sometimes with the
tracks of the skaters still fresh upon it, and
the holes cut for pickerel. Town committees
anxiously inspect the bridges and causeways,
as if by mere eye-force to intercede with the ice,
and save the treasury.

The river swelleth more and more,
Like some sweet influence stealing o'er
The passive town ; and for a while
Each tussuck makes a tiny isle,
Where, on some friendly Ararat,
Resteth the weary water-rat.

No ripple shows Musketaquid,

Her very current e'en is hid,

As deepest souls do calmest rest,

When thoughts are swelling in the breast,

NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS. 59

And she that in the summer's drought
Doth make a rippling and a rout,
Sleeps from Nahshawtuck to the Cliff,
Unruffled by a single skiff.
But by a thousand distant hills
The louder roar a thousand rills,
And many a spring which now is dumb,
And many a stream with smothered hum,
Doth swifter well and faster glide,
Though buried deep beneath the tide.

Our village shows a rural Venice,
Its broad lagoons where yonder fen is ;
As lovely as the Bay of Naples
Yon placid cove amid the maples ;
And in my neighbor's field of corn
I recognize the Golden Horn.

Here Nature taught from year to year,
When only red men came to hear,
Methinks 'twas in this school of art
Venice and Naples learned their part ;
But still their mistress, to my mind,
Her young disciples leaves behind.

The fisherman now repairs and launches his
boat. The best time for spearing is at this sea
son, before the weeds have began to grow, and
while the fishes lie in the shallow water, for in
summer they prefer the cool depths, and in the
autumn they are still more or less concealed by
the grass. The first requisite is fuel for your
crate ; and for this purpose the roots of the pitch-
pine are commonly used, found under decayed

60 NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS.

stumps, where the trees have been felled eight
or ten years.

With a crate, or jack, made of iron hoops, to
contain your fire, and attached to the bow of
your boat about three feet from the water, a
fish-spear with seven tines, and fourteen feet
long, a large basket, or barrow, to carry your
fuel and bring back your fish, and a thick outer
garment, you . are equipped for a cruise. It
should be a warm and still evening ; and then
with a fire crackling merrily at the prow, you
may launch forth like a cucullo into the night.
The dullest soul cannot go upon such an expe
dition without some of the spirit of adventure ;
as if he had stolen the boat of Charon and gone
down the Styx on a midnight expedition into
the realms of Pluto. And much speculation
does this wandering star afford to the musing
nightwalker, leading him on and on, jack-o'lan-
tern-like, over the meadows ; or, if he is wiser,
he amuses himself with imagining what of
human life, far in the silent night, is flitting
mothlike round its candle. The silent navi
gator shoves his craft gently over the water, with
a smothered pride and sense of benefaction, as
if he were the phosphor, or light-bringer, to these
dusky realms, or some sister moon, blessing the
spaces with her light. The waters, for a rod or
two on either hand and several feet in depth, are

NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS. 61

lit up with "more than noonday distinctness, and
he enjoys the opportunity which so many have
desired, for the roofs of a city are indeed raised,
and he surveys the midnight economy of the
fishes. There they lie in every variety of pos
ture ; some on their backs, with their white bel
lies uppermost, some suspended in midwater,
some sculling gently along with a dreamy mo
tion of the fins, and others quite active and wide
awake, — a scene not unlike what the human
city would present. Occasionally he will en
counter a turtle selecting the choicest morsels,
or a musk-rat resting on a tussuck. He may
exercise his dexterity, if he sees fit, on the more
distant and active fish, or fork the nearer into
his boat, as potatoes out of a pot, or even take
the sound sleepers with his hands. But these
last accomplishments he will soon learn to dis
pense with, distinguishing the real object of his
pursuit, and find compensation in the beauty
and never-ending novelty of his position. The
pines growing down to the water's edge will
show newly as in the glare of a conflagration ;
and as he floats under the willows with his
light, the song-sparrow will often wake on her
perch, and sing that strain at midnight, which
she had meditated for the morning. And when
he has done, he may have to steer his way home
through the dark by the north star, and he will

62 NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS.

feel himself some degrees nearer to it for having
lost his way on the earth.

The fishes commonly taken in this way are
pickerel, suckers, perch, eels, pouts, breams, and
shiners, — from thirty to sixty weight in a night.
Some are hard to be recognized in the unnat
ural light, especially the perch, which, his dark
bands being exaggerated, acquires a ferocious
aspect. The number of these transverse bands,
which the Report states to be seven, is, however,
very variable, for in some of our ponds they
have nine and ten even.

It appears that we have eight kinds of tor
toises, twelve snakes, — but one of which is
venomous, — nine frogs and toads, nine sala
manders, and one lizard, for our neighbors.

I am particularly attracted by the motions of
the serpent tribe. They make our hands and
feet, the wings of the bird, and the fins of the
fish seemfcj very superfluous, as if nature had
only indulged her fancy in making them. The
black snake will dart into a bush when pursued,
and circle round and round with an easy and
graceful motion, amid the thin and bare twigs,
five or six feet from the ground, as a bird flits
from bough to bough, or hang in festoons be
tween the forks. Elasticity and flexibleness in
the simpler forms of animal life are equivalent

NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS. 63

to a complex system of limbs in the higher; and
we have only to be as wise and wily as the ser
pent, to perform as difficult feats without the
vulgar assistance of hands and feet.

In May, the snapping turtle, Emysaurus ser-
pentina, is frequently taken on the meadows and
in the river. The fisherman, taking sight over
the calm surface, discovers its snout projecting
above the water, at the distance of many rods,
and easily secures his prey through its unwill
ingness to disturb the water by swimming has
tily away, for, gradually drawing its head under,
it remains resting on some limb or clump of
grass. Its eggs, which are buried at a distance
from the water, in some soft place, as a pigeon-
bed, are frequently devoured by the skunk. It
will catch fish by daylight, as a toad catches
flies, and is said to emit a transparent fluid from
its mouth to attract them.

Nature has taken more care than the fondest
parent for the education and refinement of her
children. Consider the silent influence which
flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the
meadow than the lady in the bower. When I
walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise
purveyor has been there before me; my most
delicate experience is typified there. I am struck
with the pleasing friendships and unanimities of
nature, as when the lichen on the trees takes the

64 NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS.

form of their leaves. In the most stupendous
scenes you will see delicate and fragile features,
as slight wreaths of vapor, dewlines, feathery
sprays, which suggest a high refinement, a no
ble blood and breeding, as it were. It is not
hard to account for elves and fairies ; they rep
resent this light grace, this ethereal gentility.
Bring a spray from the wood, or a crystal from
the brook, and place it on your mantel, and
your household ornaments will seem plebeian
beside its nobler fashion and bearing. It will
wave superior there, as if used to a more refined
and polished circle. It has a salute and a re
sponse to all your enthusiasm and heroism.

In the winter, I stop short in the path to ad
mire how the trees grow up without forethought,
regardless of the time and circumstances. They
do not wait as man does, but now is the golden
age of the, sapling. Earth, air, sun, and rain,
are occasion enough; they were no better in
primeval centuries. The u winter of their dis
content" never comes. Witness the buds of
the native poplar standing gayly out to the frost
on the sides of its bare switches. They express
a naked confidence. With cheerful heart one
could be a sojourner in the wilderness, if he were
sure to find there the catkins of the willow or
the alder. When I read of them in the accounts
of northern adventurers, by Baffin's Bay or Mac-

NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS. 65

kenzie's river, I see how even there too I could
dwell. They are our little vegetable redeemers.
Methinks our virtue will hold out till they come
again. They are worthy to have had a greater
than Minerva or Ceres for their inventor. Who
was the benignant goddess that bestowed them
on mankind?

Nature is mythical and mystical always, and
works with the license and extravagance of
genius. She has her luxurious and florid style
as well as art. Having a pilgrim's cup to make,
she gives to the whole, stem, bowl, handle, and
nose, some fantastic shape, as if it were to be
the car of some fabulous marine deity, a Ne-
reus or Triton.

In the winter, the botanist needs not confine
himself to his books and herbarium, and give
over his out-door pursuits, but may study a new
department of vegetable physiology, what may
be called crystalline botany, then. The winter
of 1837 was unusually favorable for this. In De
cember of that year, the Genius of vegetation
seemed to hover by night over its summer
haunts with unusual persistency. Such a hoar
frost, as is very uncommon here or anywhere,
and whose full effects can never be witnessed
after sunrise, occurred several times. As I went
forth early on a still and frosty morning, the trees
looked like airy creatures of darkness caught
5

66 NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS,

napping ; on this side huddled together with
their gray hairs streaming in a secluded valley,
which the sun had not penetrated ; on that hur
rying off in Indian file along some watercourse,
while the shrubs and grasses, like elves and
fairies of the night, sought to hide their dimin
ished heads in the snow. The river, viewed
from the high bank, appeared of a yellowish
green color, though all the landscape was white.
Every tree, shrub, and spire of grass, that could
raise its head above the snow, was covered with
a dense ice-foliage, answering, as it were, leaf
for leaf to its summer dress. Even the fences
had put forth leaves in the night. The centre,
diverging, and more minute fibres were per
fectly distinct, and the edges regularly indented.
These leaves were on the side of the twig or
stubble opposite to the sun, meeting it for the
most part at right angles, and there were others
standing out at all possible angles upon these
and upon one another, with no twig or stubble
supporting them. When the first rays of the
sun slanted over the scene, the grasses seemed
hung with innumerable jewels, which jingled
merrily as they were brushed by the foot of the
traveller, and reflected all the hues of the rain
bow as he moved from side to side. It struck
me that these ghost leaves, and the green ones
whose forms they assume, were the creatures of

NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS. 67

but one law ; that in obedience to the same law
the vegetable juices swell gradually into the per
fect leaf, on the one hand, and the crystalline
particles troop to their standard in the same
order, on the other. As if the material were
indifferent, but the law one and invariable, and
every plant in the spring but pushed up into
and filled a permanent and eternal mould, which,
summer and winter forever, is waiting to be filled.

This foliate structure is common to the coral
and the plumage of birds, and to how large a
part of animate and inanimate nature. The
same independence of law on matter is observa
ble in many other instances, as in the natural
rhymes, when some animal form, color, or odor,
has its counterpart in some vegetable. As, in
deed, all rhymes imply an eternal melody, inde
pendent of any particular sense.

As confirmation of the fact, that vegetation
is but a kind of crystallization, every one may
observe how, upon the edge of the melting frost
on the window, the needle-shaped particles are
bundled together so as to resemble fields wav
ing with grain, or shocks rising here and there
from the stubble ; on one side the vegetation of
the torrid zone, high-towering palms and wide
spread banyans, such as are seen in pictures of
oriental scenery ; on the other, arctic pines stiff
frozen, with downcast branches.

68 NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS.

Vegetation has been made the type of all
growth ; but as in crystals the law is more ob
vious, their material being more simple, and for
the most part more transient and fleeting, would
it not be as philosophical as convenient to con
sider all growth, all filling up within the limits
of nature, but a crystallization more or less rapid ?

On this occasion, in the side of the high bank
of the river, wherever the water or other cause
had formed a cavity, its throat and outer edge,
like the entrance to a citadel, bristled with a
glistening ice-armor. In one place you might
see minute ostrich-feathers, which seemed the
waving plumes of the warriors filing into the
fortress ; in another, the glancing, fan-shaped
banners of the Lilliputian host; and in another,
the needle-shaped particles collected into bun
dles, resembling the plumes of the pine, might
pass for a phalanx of spears. From the under
side of the ice in the brooks, where there was a
thicker ice below, depended a mass of crystal
lization, four or five inches deep, in the form of
prisms, with their lower ends open, wrhich, when
the ice was laid on its smooth side, resembled
the roofs and steeples of a Gothic city, or the
vessels of a crowded haven under a press of
canvas. The very mud in the road, where the
ice had melted, was crystallized with deep rec
tilinear fissures, and the crystalline masses in

NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS. 69

the sides of the ruts resembled exactly asbestos
in the disposition of their needles. Around the
roots of the stubble and flower-stalks, the frost
was gathered into the form of irregular conical
shells, or fairy rings. In some places the ice-
crystals were lying upon granite rocks, directly
over crystals of quartz, the frost-work of a longer
night, crystals of a longer period, but to some
eye unprejudiced by the short term of human
life, melting as fast as the former.

In the Report on the Invertebrate Animals,
this singular fact is recorded, which teaches us
to put a new value on time and space. " The
distribution of the marine shells is well worthy
of notice as a geological fact. Cape Cod, the
right arm of the Commonwealth, reaches out
into the ocean, some fifty or sixty miles. It is
nowhere many miles wide ; but this narrow point
of land has hitherto proved a barrier to the mi
grations of many species of Mollusca. Several
genera and numerous species, which are separ
ated by the intervention of only a few miles of
land, are effectually prevented from mingling by
the Cape, and do not pass from one side to the
other Of the one hundred and ninety-
seven marine species, eighty-three do not pass to
the south shore, and fifty are not found on the
north shore of the Cape."

That common muscle, the Unio complanatus,

70 NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS.

or more properly fluviatllis, left in the spring by
the musk-rat upon rocks and stumps, appears to
have been an important article of food with the
Indians. In one place, where they are said to
have feasted, they are found in large quantities,
at an elevation of thirty feet above the river, fill
ing the soil to the depth of a foot, and mingled
with ashes and Indian remains.

The works we have placed at the head of our
chapter, with as much license as the preacher
selects his text, are such as imply more labor
than enthusiasm. The State wanted complete
catalogues of its natural riches, with such addi
tional facts merely as would be directly useful.

The reports on Fishes, Reptiles, Insects, and
Invertebrate Animals, however, indicate labor
and research, and have a value independent of
the object of the legislature.

Those on Herbaceous Plants and Birds can
not be of much value, as long as Bigelow and
Nuttall are accessible. They serve but to indi
cate, with more or less exactness, what species
are found in the State. We detect several errors
ourselves, and a more practised eye would no
doubt expand the list.

The Quadrupeds deserved a more final and
instructive report than they have obtained.

These volumes deal much in measurements
arid minute descriptions, not interesting to the

NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS. 71

general reader, with only here and there a col
ored sentence to allure him, like those plants
growing in dark forests, which bear only leaves
without blossoms. But the ground was com
paratively unbroken, and we will not complain
of the pioneer, if he raises no flowers with his
first crop. Let us not underrate the value of a
fact ; it will one day flower in a truth. It is
astonishing how few facts of importance are
added in a century to the natural history of any
animal. The natural history of man himself is
still being gradually written. Men are knowing
enough after their fashion. Every countryman
and dairymaid knows that the coats of the fourth
stomach of the calf will curdle milk, and what
particular mushroom is a safe and nutritious
diet. You cannot go into any field or wood,
but it will seem as if every stone had been
turned, and the bark on every tree ripped up.
But, after all, it is much easier to discover than
to see when the cover is off. It has been well
said that " the attitude of inspection is prone."
Wisdom does not inspect, but behold. We
must look a long time before we can see. Slow
are the beginnings of philosophy. He has some
thing demoniacal in him, who can discern a law
or couple two facts. We can imagine a time
when, — " Water runs down hill," — may have
been taught in the schools. The true man of

72 NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS.

science will know nature better by his finer or
ganization ; he will smell, taste, see, hear, feel,
better than other men. His will be a deeper
and finer experience. We do not learn by infer
ence and deduction, and the application of math
ematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse
and sympathy. It is with science as with eth
ics, — we cannot know truth by contrivance and
method ; the Baconian is as false as any other,
and with all the helps of machinery and the arts,
the most scientific will still be the healthiest
and friendliest man, and possess a more perfect
Indian wisdom.

A WALK TO WACHUSETT.

[1843.]

3?he needles of the pine
All to the west incline.

CONCORD, July 19, 1842.

SUMMER and winter our eyes had rested on
the dim outline of the mountains in our hori
zon, to which distance and indistinctness lent
a grandeur not their own, so that they served
equally to interpret all the allusions of poets
and travellers; whether with Homer, on a spring
morning, we sat down on the many -peaked
Olympus, or, with Virgil and his compeers,
roamed the Etrurian and Thessalian hills, or
with Humboldt measured the more modern An
des and Teneriffe. Thus we spoke our mind
to them, standing on the Concord cliffs. —

With frontier strength ye stand your ground,
With grand .content ye circle round,
Tumultuous silence for all sound,
Ye distant nursery of rills,
Monadnock, and the Peterboro' hills ;
Like some vast fleet,

74 A WALK TO WACHUSETT.

Sailing through rain and sleet,

Through winter's cold and summer's heat ;

Still holding on, upon your high emprise,

Until ye find a shore amid the skies ;

Not skulking close to land,

With cargo contraband,

For they who sent a venture out by ye

Have set the sun to see

Their honesty.

Ships of the line, each one,

Ye to the westward run,

Always before the gale,

Under a press of sail,

With weight of metal all untold.

I seem to feel ye, in my firm seat here,

Immeasurable depth of hold,

And breadth of beam, and length of running gear.

Methinks ye take luxurious pleasure

In your novel western leisure ;

So cool your brows, and freshly blue,

As Time had nought for ye to do ;

For ye lie at your length,

An unappropriated strength,

Unhewn primeval timber,

For knees so stiff, for masts so limber ;

The stock of which new earths are made,

One day to be our western trade,

Fit for the stanchions of a world

Which through the seas of space is hurled.

While we enjoy a lingering ray,
Ye still o'ertop the western day,
Reposing yonder, on God's croft,
Like solid stacks of hay.

A WALK TO WACHUSETT. 75

Edged with silver, and with gold,

The clouds hang o'er in daniask fold,

And with such depth of amber light

The west is dight,

Where still a few rays slant,

That even heaven seems extravagant.

On the earth's edge mountains and trees

Stand as they were on air graven,

Or as the vessels in a haven

Await the morning breeze.

I fancy even

Through your defiles windeth the way to heaven ;

And yonder still, in spite of history's page,

Linger the golden and the silver age ;

Upon the laboring gale

The news of future centuries is brought,

And of new dynasties of thought,

From your remotest vale.

But special I remember thee,

Wachusett, who like me

Standest alone without society.

Thy far blue eye,

A remnant of the sky,

Seen through the clearing or the gorge,

Or from the windows on the forge,

Doth leaven all it passes by.

Nothing is true,

But stands 'tween me and you,

Thou western pioneer,

Who know'st not shame nor fear,

By venturous spirit driven,

Under the eaves of heaven,

And can'st expand thee there,

And breathe enough of air ?

76 A WALK TO WACHUSETT.

Upholding heaven, holding down earth,

Thy pastime from thy birth,

Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other ;

May I approve myself thy worthy brother !

At length, like Rasselas, and other inhabitants
of happy valleys, we resolved to scale the blue
wall which bound the western horizon, though
not without misgivings, that thereafter no visi
ble fairy land would exist for us. But we will
not leap at once to our journey's end, though
near, but imitate Homer, who conducts his
reader over the plain, and along the resound
ing sea, though it be but to the tent of Achilles.
In the spaces of thought are the reaches of land
and water, where men go and come. The land
scape lies far and fair within, and the deepest
thinker is the farthest travelled.

At a cool and early hour on a pleasant morn
ing in July, my companion and I passed rapidly
through Acton and Stow, stopping to rest and
refresh us on the bank of a small stream, a tribu
tary of the Assabet, in the latter town. As we
traversed the cool woods of Acton, with stout
staves in our hands, we were cheered by the
song of the red-eye, the thrushes, the phcebe,
and the cuckoo ; and as we passed through the
open country, we inhaled the fresh scent of every
field, and all nature lay passive, to be viewed
and travelled. Every rail, every farm-house,

A WALK TO WACHUSETT. 77

seen dimly in the twilight, every tinkling sound
told of peace and purity, and we moved hap
pily along the dank roads, enjoying not such
privacy as the day leaves when it withdraws,
but such as it has not profaned. It was soli
tude with light ; which is better than darkness.
But anon, the sound of the mower's rifle was
heard in the fields, and this, too, mingled with
the lowing kine.

This part of our route lay through the coun
try of hops, which plant perhaps supplies the
want of the vine in American scenery, and may
remind the traveller of Italy, and the South of
France, whether he traverses the country when
the hop-fields, as then, present solid and regular
masses of verdure, hanging in graceful festoons
from pole to pole ; the cool coverts where lurk
the gales which refresh the wayfarer ; or in Sep
tember, when the women and children, and the
neighbors from far and near, are gathered to pick
the hops into long troughs ; or later still, when
the poles stand piled in vast pyramids in the
yards, or lie in heaps by the roadside.

The culture of the hop, with the processes of
picking, drying in the kiln, and packing for the
market, as well as the uses to which it is ap
plied, so analogous to the culture and uses of
the grape, may afford a theme for future poets.

The mower in the adjacent meadow could

78 A WALK TO WACHUSETT.

not tell us the name of the brook on whose
banks we had rested, or whether it had any,
but his younger companion, perhaps his brother,
knew that it was Great Brook. Though they
stood very near together in the field, the things
they knew were very far apart ; nor did they
suspect each other's reserved knowledge, till the
stranger came by. In Bolton, while we rested
on the rails of a cottage fence, the strains of
music which issued from within, probably in
compliment to us, sojourners, reminded us that
thus far men were fed by the accustomed pleas
ures. So soon did we, wayfarers, begin to learn
that man's life is rounded with the same few
facts, the same simple relations everywhere, and
it is vain to travel to find it new. The flowers
grow more various ways than he. But coming
soon to higher land, which afforded a prospect of
the mountains, we thought we had not travelled
in vain, if it were only to hear a truer and wilder
pronunciation of their names, from the lips of
the in habitants; not JF&#-tatic, TF^-chusett, but
TFbr-tatic, Wor-chusett. It made us ashamed
of our tame and civil pronunciation, and we
looked upon them as born and bred farther west
than we. Their tongues had a more generous
accent than ours, as if breath was cheaper where
they wagged. A countryman, who speaks but
seldom, talks copiously, as it were, as his wife

A WALK TO WACHUSETT. 79

sets cream and cheese before you without stint.
Before noort we had reached the highlands over
looking the valley of Lancaster, (affording the
first fair and open prospect into the west,) and
-there, on the top of a hill, in the shade of some
oaks, near to where a spring bubbled out from
a leaden pipe, we rested during the heat of the
day, reading Virgil, and enjoying the scenery.
It was such a place as one feels to be on the
outside of the earth, for from it we could, in
some measure, see the form and structure of the
globe. There lay Wachusett, the "object of our
journey, lowering upon us with unchanged pro
portions, though with a less ethereal aspect than
had greeted our morning gaze, while further
north, in successive order, slumbered its sister
mountains along the horizon.

We could get no further into the ^Eneid than

— atque altse moenia Romae,

— and the wall of high Rome,

before we were constrained to reflect by what
myriad tests a work of genius has to be tried ;
that Virgil, away in Rome, two thousand years
off, should have to unfold his meaning, the in
spiration of Italian vales, to the pilgrim on New
England hills. This life so raw and modern,
that so civil and ancient ; and yet we read Vir
gil, mainly to be reminded of the identity of
human nature in all ages, and, by the poet's

80 A WALK TO WACHUSETT.

own account, we are both the children of a
late age, and live equally under the reign of
Jupiter.

" He shook honey from the leaves, and removed fire,
And stayed the wine, everywhere flowing in rivers ;
That experience, by meditating, might invent various arts
By degrees, and seek the blade of corn in furrows,
And strike out hidden fire from the veins of the flint."

The old world stands serenely behind the
new, as one mountain yonder towers behind
another, more dim and distant. Rome imposes
her story still upon this late generation. The
very children in the school we had that morn
ing passed, had gone through her wars, and
recited her alarms, ere they had heard of the
wars of neighboring Lancaster. The roving
eye still rests inevitably on her hills, and she
still holds up the skirts of the sky on that side,
and makes the past remote.

The lay of the land hereabouts is well wor
thy the attention of the traveller. The hill on
which we were resting made part of an exten
sive range, running from southwest to north
east, across the country, and separating the
waters of the Nashua from those of the Con
cord, whose banks we had left in the morning ;
and by bearing in mind this fact, we could ea
sily determine whither each brook was bound
that crossed our path. Parallel to this, and fif-

A WALK TO WACHUSETT. 81

teen miles further west, beyond the deep and
broad valley in which lie Groton, Shirley, Lan
caster, and Boylston, runs the Wachusett range,
in the same general direction. The descent into
the valley on the Nashua side, is by far the
most sudden ; and a couple of miles brought
us to the southern branch of the Nashua, a shal
low but rapid stream, flowing between high and
gravelly banks. But we soon learned that there
were no gelidce voiles into which we had de
scended, and missing the coolness of the morn
ing air, feared it had become the sun's turn to
try his power upon us.

" The sultry sun had gained the middle sky,
And not a tree, and not an herb was nigh."

and with melancholy pleasure we echoed the
melodious plaint of our fellow-traveller, Hassan,
in the desert, —

" Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day,
When first from Schiraz' walls I bent my way."

The air lay lifeless between the hills, as in a
seething caldron, with no leaf stirring, and in
stead of the fresh odor of grass and clover, with
which we had before been regaled, the dry scent
of every herb seemed merely medicinal. Yield
ing, therefore, to the heat, we strolled into the
woods, and along the course of a rivulet, on
whose banks we loitered, observing at our leis-

82 A WALK TO WACHUSETT.

ure the products of these new fields. He who
traverses the woodland paths, at this season,
will have occasion to remember the small droop
ing bell-like flowers and slender red stem of the
dogs-bane, and the coarser stem and berry of the
poke, which are both common in remoter and
wilder scenes ; and if " the sun casts such a re
flecting heat from the sweet fern," as makes him
faint, when he is climbing the bare hills, as they
complained who first penetrated into these parts,
the cool fragrance of the swamp pink restores
him again, when traversing the valleys between.
As we went on our way late in the afternoon,
we refreshed ourselves by bathing our feet in
every rill that crossed the road, and anon, as
we were able to walk in the shadows of the
hills, recovered our morning elasticity. Passing
through Sterling, we reached the banks of the
Stillwater, in the western part of the town, at
evening, where is a small village collected. We
fancied that there was already a certain western
look about this place, a smell of pines and roar
I of water, recently confined by dams, belying its
name, which were exceedingly grateful. When
the first inroad has been made, a few acres lev
elled, and a few houses erected, the forest looks
wilder than ever. Left to herself, nature is al
ways more or less civilized, and delights in
a certain refinement; but where the axe has

A WALK TO WACHUSETT. 83

encroached upon the edge of the forest, the
dead and unsightly limbs of the pine, which she
had concealed with green banks of verdure, are
exposed to sight. This village had, as yet, no
post-office, nor any settled name. In the small
villages which we entered, the villagers gazed
after us, with a complacent, almost compassion
ate look, as if we were just making our debut in
the world at a late hour. " Nevertheless," did
they seem to say, " come and study us, and learn
men and manners." So is each one's world but
a clearing in the forest, so much open and in
closed ground. The landlord had not yet re
turned from the field with his men, and the
cows had yet to be milked. But we remembered
the inscription on the wall of the Swedish inn,
" You will find at Trolhate excellent bread,
meat, and wine, provided you bring them with
you," and were contented. But I must confess
it did somewhat disturb our pleasure, in this
withdrawn spot, to have our own village news
paper handed us by our host, as if the greatest
charm the country offered to the traveller was
the facility of communication with the town.
Let it recline on its own everlasting hills, and
not be looking out from their summits for some
petty Boston or New York in the horizon.

At intervals we heard the murmuring of wa
ter, and the slumberous breathing of crickets

84 A WALK TO WACHUSKTT.

throughout the night ; and left the inn the next
morning in the gray twilight, after it had been
hallowed by the night air, and when only the
innocent cows were stirring, with a kind of re
gret. It was only four miles to the base of
the mountain, and the scenery was already more
picturesque. Our road lay along the course of
the Stillwater, which was brawling at the bottom
of a deep ravine, filled with pines and rocks,
tumbling fresh from the mountains, so soon,
alas ! to commence its career of usefulness. At
first, a cloud hung between us and the summit,
but it was soon blown away. As we gathered
the raspberries, which grew abundantly by the
roadside, we fancied that that action was con
sistent with a lofty prudence, as if the traveller
who ascends into a mountainous region should
fortify himself by eating of such light ambrosial
fruits as grow there ; and, drinking of the springs
which gush out from the mountain sides, as he
gradually inhales the subtler and purer atmos
phere of those elevated places, thus propitiating
the mountain gods, by a sacrifice of their own
fruits. The gross products of the plains and
valleys are for such as dwell therein; but it
seemed to us that the juices of this berry had
relation to the thin air of the mountain-tops.

In due time we began to ascend the moun
tain, passing, first, through a grand sugar maple-

A WALK TO WACHUSETT. 85

wood, which bore the marks of the augur, then
a denser forest, which gradually became dwarfed,
till there were no trees whatever. We at length
pitched our tent on the summit. It is but nine
teen hundred feet above the village of Princeton,
and three thousand above the level of the sea ;
but by this slight elevation it is infinitely re
moved from the plain, and when we reached it,
we felt a sense of remoteness, as if we had
travelled into distant regions, to Arabia Petrea,
or the farthest east. A robin upon a staff, was
the highest object in sight. Swallows were
flying about us, and the chewink and cuckoo
were heard near at hand. The summit consists
of a few acres, destitute of trees, covered with
bare rocks, interspersed with blueberry bushes,
raspberries, gooseberries, strawberries, moss, and
a fine wiry grass. The common yellow lily, and
dwarf-cornel, grow abundantly in .the crevices
of the rocks, This clear space, which is gently
rounded, is bounded a few feet lower by a thick
shrubbery of oaks, with maples, aspens, beeches,
cherries, and occasionally a mountain-ash inter
mingled, among which we found the bright blue
berries of the Solomon's Seal, and the fruit of
the pyrola. From the foundation of a wooden
observatory, which was formerly erected on the
highest point, forming a rude, hollow structure
of stone, a dozen feet in diameter, and five or

86 A WALK TO WACHUSETT.

six in height, we could see Monadnock, in
simple grandeur, in the northwest, rising nearly
a thousand feet higher, still the " far blue moun
tain," though with an altered profile. The
first day the weather was so hazy that it
was in vain we endeavored to unravel the ob
scurity. It was like looking into the sky again,
and the patches of forest here and there seemed
to flit like clouds over a lower heaven. As to
voyagers of an aerial Polynesia, the earth seemed
like a larger island in the ether ; on every side,
even as low as we, the sky shutting down, like
an unfathomable deep, around it, a blue Pacific
island, where who knows what islanders in
habit ? and as we sail near its shores we see the
waving of trees, and hear the lowing of kine.

We read Virgil and Wordsworth in our tent,
with new pleasure there, while waiting for a
clearer atmosphere, nor did the weather prevent
our appreciating the simple truth and beauty of
Peter Bell :

" And he had lain beside his asses,
On lofty Cheviot hills."

" And he had trudged through Yorkshire dales,
Among the rocks and winding .scar,1?,
Where deep and low the hamlets lie
Beneath their little patch of sky,
And little lot of stars."

Who knows but this hill may one day be a

A WALK TO WACHUSETT. 87

Helvellyn, or even a Parnassus, and the Muses
haunt here, and other Homers frequent the
neighboring plains,

Not unconcerned Wachusett rears his head
Above the field, so late from nature won,

With patient brow reserved, as one who read
New annals in the history of man.

The blue-berries which the mountain afforded,
added to the milk we had brought, made our
frugal supper, while for entertainment the even
song of the wood-thrush rung along the ridge.
Our eyes rested on no painted ceiling nor car
peted hall, but on skies of nature's painting,
and hills and forests of her embroidery. Be
fore sunset, we rambled along the ridge to the
north, while a hawk soared still above us. It
was a place where gods might wander, so sol
emn and solitary, and removed frQm all conta
gion with the plain. As the evening canie on,
the haze was condensed in vapor, and the land
scape became more distinctly visible, and nu
merous sheets of water were brought to light.

Et jam summa procul villarum culmina fumant,
Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae.

now the tops of the villas smoke afar off,
And the shadows fall longer from the high mountains.

As we stood on the stone tower while the sun
was setting, we saw the shades of night creep

88 A WALK TO WACHUSETT.

gradually over the valleys of the east, and the
inhabitants went into their houses, and shut
their doors, while the moon silently rose up, and
took possession of that part. And then the
same scene was repeated on the west side, as
far as the Connecticut and the Green Moun
tains, and the sun's rays fell on us two alone,
of all New England men.

It was the night but one before the full of the
moon, so bright that we could see to read dis
tinctly by moonlight, and in the evening strolled
over the summit without danger. There was,
by chance, a fire blazing on Monadnock that
night, which lighted up the whole western hori
zon, and by making us aware of a community
of mountains, made our position seem less soli
tary. But at length the wind drove us to the
shelter of our tent, and we closed its door for
the night, and fell asleep.

It was thrilling to hear the wind roar over the
rocks, at intervals when we waked, for it had
grown quite cold and windy. The night was in
its elements, simple even to majesty in that bleak
place, — a bright moonlight and a piercing wind.
It was at no time darker than twilight within
the tent, and we could easily see the moon
through its transparent roof as we lay ; for there
was the moon still above us, with Jupiter and
Saturn on either hand, looking domp on Wachu-

A WALK TO WACHUSETT. 89

sett, and it was a satisfaction to know that they
were our fellow-travellers still, as high and out
of our reach as our own destiny, Truly the stars
were given for a consolation to man. We should
not know but our life were fated to be always
grovelling, but it is permitted to behold them, and
surely they are deserving of a fair destiny. We
see laws which never fail, of whose failure we
never conceived ; and their lamps burn all the
night, too, as well as all day, — so rich and lavish
is that nature which can afford this superfluity
of light.

The morning twilight began as soon as the
moon had set, and we arose and kindled our fire,
whose blaze might have been seen for thirty
miles around. As the daylight increased, it was
remarkable how rapidly the wind went down.
There was no dew on the summit, but coldness
supplied its place. When the dawn had reached
its prime, we enjoyed the view of a distinct hori
zon line, and could fancy ourselves at sea, and
the distant hills the waves in the horizon, as seen
from the deck of a vessel. The cherry-birds flit
ted around us, the nuthatch and flicker were
heard among the bushes, the titmouse perched
within a few feet, and the song of the wood-
thrush again rung along the ridge. At length
we saw the sun rise up out of the sea, and shine
on Massachusetts ; and from this moment the at-

90 A WALK TO WACHUSETT.

mosphere grew more and more transparent till
the time of our departure, and we began to real
ize the extent of the view, and how the earth,
in some degree, answered to the heavens in
breadth, the white villages to the constellations
in the sky. There was little of the sublimity
and grandeur which belong to mountain scenery,
but an immense landscape to ponder on a sum
mer's day. We could see how ample and roomy
is nature. As far as the eye could reach, there
was little life in the landscape; the few birds
that flitted past did not crowd. The travellers
on the remote highways, which intersect the
country on every side, had no fellow-travellers
for miles, before or behind. On every side, the
eye ranged over successive circles of towns, ris
ing one above another, like the terraces of a
vineyard, till they were lost in the horizon.
Wachusett is, in fact, the observatory of the
State. There lay Massachusetts, spread out be
fore us in its length and breadth, like a map.
There was the level horizon, which told of the
sea on the east and south, the well-known hills
of New Hampshire on the north, and the misty
summits of the Hoosac and Green Mountains,
first made visible to us the evening before, blue
and unsubstantial, like some bank of clouds
which the morning wind would dissipate, on the
northwest and west. These last distant ranges,

A WALK TO WACHUSETT. .91

on which the eye rests unwearied, commence
with an abrupt boulder in the north, beyond the
Connecticut, and travel southward, with three or
four peaks dimly seen. But Monadnock, rear
ing its masculine front in the northwest, is the
grandest feature. As we beheld it, we knew
that it was the height of land between the two
rivers, on this side the valley of the Merrimack,
or that of the Connecticut, fluctuating with
their blue seas of air, — these rival vales, al
ready teeming with Yankee men along their
respective streams, born to what destiny who
shall tell ? Watatic, and the neighboring hills
in this State and in New Hampshire, are a
continuation of the same elevated range on
which we were standing. But that New Hamp
shire bluff, — that promontory of a State, — low
ering day and night on this our State of Massa
chusetts, will longest haunt our dreams.

We could, at length, realize the place moun
tains occupy on the land, and how they come
into the general scheme of the universe. When
first we climb their summits and observe their
lesser irregularities, we do not give credit to the
comprehensive intelligence which shaped them ;
but when afterward we behold their outlines in
the horizon, we confess that the hand which
moulded their opposite slopes, making one to
balance the other, worked round a deep centre,

92 . A WALK TO WACHUSETT.

and was privy to the plan of tn"e universe. So
is the least part of nature in its bearings refer
red to all space. These lesser mountain ranges,
as well as the Alleghanies, run from northeast
to southwest, and parallel with these mountain
streams are the more fluent rivers, answering to
the general direction of the coast, the bank of
the great ocean stream itself. Even the clouds,
with their thin bars, fall into the same direction
by preference, and such even is the course of
the prevailing winds, and the migration of men
and birds. A mountain-chain determines many
things for the statesman and philosopher. The
improvements of civilization rather creep along
its sides than cross its summit. How often is it
a barrier to prejudice and fanaticism ? In pass
ing over these heights of land, through their thin
atmosphere, the follies of the plain are refined
and purified ; and as many species of plants do
not scale their summits, so many species of folly
no doubt do not cross the Alleghanies ; it is only
the hardy mountain plant that creeps quite over
the ridge, and descends into the valley beyond.

We get a dim notion of the flight of birds,
especially of such as fly high in the air, by
having ascended a mountain. We can now see
what landmarks mountains are to their migra
tions ; how the Catskills and Highlands have
hardly sunk to them, when Wachusett and

A WALK TO WACHUSETT. 93

Monadnock open a passage to the northeast;
how they are guided, too, in their course by the
rivers and valleys;1 and who knows but by the
stars, as well as the mountain ranges, and not
by the petty landmarks which we use. The
bird whose eye takes in the Green Mountains
on the one side, and the ocean on the other, need
not be at a loss to find its way,

At noon we descended the mountain, and
having returned to the abodes of men, turned
our faces to the east again ; measuring our prog
ress, from time to time, by the more ethereal
hues which the mountain assumed. Passing
swiftly through Stillwater and Sterling, as with
a downward impetus, we found ourselves almost
at home again in the green meadows of Jjancas-
ter, so like our own Concord, for both are wa
tered by two streams which unite near their
centres, and have many other features in com
mon. There is an unexpected refinement about
this scenery ; level prairies of great extent, inter
spersed with elms and hop-fields and groves of
trees, give it almost a classic appearance. This,
it will be remembered, was the scene of Mrs.
Rowlandson's capture, and of other events in the
Indian wars, but from this July afternoon, and
under that mild exterior, those times seemed as
remote as the irruption of the Goths. They
were the dark age of New England. On be-

94 A WALK TO WACHUSETT.

holding a picture of a New England village as
it then appeared, with a fair open prospect, and
a light on trees and river, as if it were broad
noon, we find we had not thought the sun shone
in those days, or that men lived in broad day
light then. We do not imagine the sun shining
on hill and valley during Philip's war, nor on
the war-path of Paugus, or Standish, or Church,
or Lovell, with serene summer weather, but a
dim twilight or night did those events transpire
in. They must have fought in the shade of their
own dusky deeds.

At length, as we plodded along the dusty
roads, our thoughts became as dusty as they ;
all thought indeed stopped, thinking broke down,
or proceeded only passively in a sort of rhythmi
cal cadence of the confused material of thought,
and we found ourselves mechanically repeating
some familiar measure which timed with our
tread ; some verse of the Robin Hood ballads,
for instance, which one can recommend to travel

by-

.- " Swearers are swift, sayd lyttle John,

As the wind blows over the hill ;
For if it be never so loud this night,
To-morrow it may be still."

And so it went up hill and down till a stone
interrupted the line, when a new verse was
chosen.

A WALK TO WACHUSETT. 95

" His shoote it was but loosely shot,
Yet flewe not the arrowe in vaine,

For it met one of the sheriffe's men,
And William-a-Trent was slaine."

There is, however, this consolation to the
most way-worn traveller, upon the dustiest road,
that the path his feet describe is so perfectly
symbolical of human life, — now climbing the
hills, now descending into the vales. From the
summits he beholds the heavens and the horizon,
from the vales he looks up to the heights again.
He is treading his old lessons still, and though he
may be very weary and travel-worn, it is yet
sincere experience.

Leaving the Nashua, we changed our route a
little, and arrived at Stillriver Village, in the
western part of Harvard, just as the sun was set
ting. From this place, which lies to the north
ward, upon the western slope of the same range
of hills on which we had spent the noon before,
in the adjacent town, the prospect is beautiful,
and the grandeur of the mountain outlines un
surpassed. There was such a repose and quiet
here at this hour, as if the very hill-sides were
enjoying the scene, and we passed slowly along,
looking back over the country we had traversed,
and listening to the evening song of the robin,
we could not help contrasting the equanimity of
nature with the bustle and impatience of man.

96 A WALK TO WACHUSETT.

His words and actions presume always a crisis
near at hand, but she is forever silent and unpre
tending.

And now that we have returned to the desul
tory life of the plain, let us endeavor to import
a little of that mountain grandeur into it. We
will remember within what walls we lie, and
understand that this level life too has its summit,
and why from the mountain-top the deepest val
leys have a tinge of blue ; that there is elevation
in every hour, as no part of the earth is so low
that the heavens may not be seen from, and we
have only to stand on the summit of our hour to
command an uninterrupted horizon.

We rested that night at Harvard, and the next
morning, while one bent his steps to the nearer
village of Groton, the other took his separate and
solitary way to the peaceful meadows of Con
cord ; but let him not forget to record the brave
hospitality of a farmer and his wife, who gener
ously entertained him at their board, though the
poor wayfarer could only congratulate the one
on the continuance of hayweather, and silently
accept the kindness of the other. Refreshed by
this instance of generosity, no less than by the
substantial viands set before him, he pushed for
ward with new vigor, and reached the banks of
the Concord before the sun had climbed many
degrees into the heavens.

THE LANDLORD.

[1843.]

UNDER the one word, house, are included the
school-house, the alms-house, the jail, the tavern,
the dwelling-house ; and the meanest shed or
cave in which men live contains the elements of
all these. But nowhere on the earth stands the
entire and perfect house. The Parthenon,, St.
Peter's, the Gothic minster, the palace, the hovel,
are but imperfect executions of an imperfect
idea. Who would dwell in them ? Perhaps to
the eye of the gods, the cottage is more holy
than the Parthenon, for they look down with no
especial favor upon the shrines formally ded
icated to them, and that should be the most
sacred roof which shelters most of humanity.
Surely, then, the gods who are most interested
in the human race preside over the Tavern,
where especially men congregate^ Methinks I
see the thousand shrines erected to Hospitality
shining afar in all countries, as well Mahometan
and Jewish, as Christian, khans, and caravansa
ries, and inns, whither all pilgrims without dis
tinction resort.

7

98 THE LANDLORD.

fcifcewisej wre look in vain, east or west over
the earth, to find the perfect man; but each rep
resents only some particular excellence. The
Landlord is a man of more open and general
sympathies, who possesses a spirit of hospitality
which is its own reward, and feeds and shelters
men from pure love of the creatures. To be
sure, this profession is as often filled by imper
fect characters, and such as have sought it from
unworthy motives, as any other, but so much
the more should we prize the true and honest
Landlord when we meet with him.

Who has not imagined to himself a country inn,
where the traveller shall really feel in, and at home,
and at his public-housefwho was before at his
private house ; whose host is indeed a host, and
a lord of the land, a self-appointed brother of his
race ; called to his place, beside, by all the winds
of heaven and his good genius, as truly as the
preacher is called $o preach ; a man of such uni
versal sympathies, and so broad and genial a
human nature, that he would fain sacrifice the
tender but narrow ties of private friendship, to a
broad, sunshiny, fair-weather-and-foul friendship
for his race ^who loves men, not as a philoso
pher, with philanthropy, nor as an overseer of
the poor, with charity, but by a necessity of his
nature, as he loves dogs and horses ; and stand
ing at his open door from morning till night,

THE LANDLORD. 99

would fain see more and more of them come
along the highway, and is never satiated. To
him the sun and moon are but travellers, the one
by day and the other by night ; and they too
patronise his house. To his imagination all
things travel save his sign-post and himself; and
though you may be his neighbor for years, he
will show you only the civilities of the road.
But on the other hand, while nations and indi
viduals are alike selfish and exclusive, he loves
all men equally ; and if he treats his nearest
neighbor as a stranger, since he has invited all
nations to share his hospitality, the farthest trav
elled is in some measure kindred to him who
takes him into the bosom of his family.

He keeps a house of entertainment at the sign
of the Black Horse or the Spread Eagle, and is
known far and wide, and his fame travels with
increasing radius every year. All the neigh
borhood is in his interest, and if the traveller ask
how far to a tavern, he receives some such an
swer as this : " Well, sir, there's a house about
three miles from here, where they haven't taken
down their sign yet ; but it's only ten miles to
Slocum's, and that's a capital house, both for
man and beast." At three miles he passes a
cheerless barrack, standing desolate behind its
sign-post, neither public nor private, and has
glimpses of a discontented couple who have

100 THE LANDLORD.

mistaken their calling. At ten miles see where
the Tavern stands, — really an entertaining' pros
pect, — so public and inviting that only the rain
and snow do not enter. It is no gay pavilion,
made of bright stuffs, and furnished with nuts
and gingerbread, but as plain and sincere^ as a
caravansary; located in no Tarrytown, where
you receive only the civilities of commerce, but
far in the fields it exercises a primitive hospital
ity, amid the fresh scent of new hay and rasp
berries, if it be summer time, and the tinkling of
cow-bells from invisible pastures ; for it is a land
flowing with milk and honey, and the newest
milk courses in a broad, deep stream across the
premises.

In these retired places the tavern is first of all
a house — (elsewhere, last of all, or never,^- and
warms and shelters its inhabitants. It is as sim
ple and sincere in its essentials as the caves in
which the first men dwelt, but it is also as open
and public. The traveller steps across the thresh
old, and lo ! he too is master, for he only can be
called proprietor of the house here who behaves
with most propriety in it. The Landlord stands
clear back in nature, to my imagination, with
his axe and spade felling trees and raising pota
toes with the vigor of a pioneer ; with Prome
thean energy making nature yield her increase to
supply the wants of so many ; and he is riot so

£ THE LANDLORD. 101

exhausted, nor of so short a stride, but that he
comes forward even to the highway to this wide
hospitality and publicity. Surely, he has solved
some of the problems of life. He comes in at
his backdoor, holding a log fresh cut for the
hearth upon his shoulder with one hand, while
he greets the newly arrived traveller with the
other.

Here at length we have free range, as not in
palaces, nor cottages, nor temples, and intrude
nowhere. All the secrets of housekeeping are
exhibited to the eyes of men, above and below,
before and behind. ( This is the necessary way
to live, men have confessed, in these days, and
shall he skulk and hide ? / And why should we
have any serious disgust 'at kitchens ? Perhaps
they are the holiest recess of the house. There
is the hearth, after all, — and the settle, and the
fagots, and the kettle, and the crickets. We
have pleasant reminiscences of these. They are
the heart, the left ventricle, the very vital part of
the house. Here the real and sincere life which
we meet in the streets was actually fed and
sheltered. Here burns the taper that cheers the
lonely traveller by night, and from this hearth
ascend the smokes that populate the valley to
his eyes by day. On the whole, a man may not
be so little ashamed of any other part of his
house, for here is his sincerity and earnest, at

102 THE LANDLORD.

least. It may not be here that the besoms are
plied most, — it is not here that they need to be,
for dust will not settle on the kitchen floor more
than in nature.

Hence it will not do for the Landlord to pos
sess too fine a nature. He must have health
above the common accidents of life, subject to
no modern fashionable diseases ; but no taste,
rather a vast relish or appetite. His sentiments
on all subjects will be delivered as freely as the
wind blows ; there is nothing private or individ
ual in them, though still original, but they are
public, and of the hue of the heavens over his
house, — a certain out-of-door obviousness and
transparency not to be disputed. What he does,
his manners are not to be complained of, though
abstractly offensive, for it is what man does, and
in him the race is exhibited, j When he eats, he
is liver and bowels, and the whole digestive
apparatus to the company, and so all admit the
thing is done, j^e must have no idiosyncrasies,
no particular bents or tendencies to this or that,
but a general, uniform, and healthy development,
such as his portly person indicates, offering him
self equally on all sides to men. He is not one
of your peaked and inhospitable men of genius,
with particular tastes, but, as we said before,
has one uniform relish, and taste which never
aspires higher than a tavern-sign, or the cut of

THE LANDLORD. 103

a weather-cock. The man of genius, like a dog
with a bone, or the slave who has swallowed a
diamond, or a patient with the gravel, sits afar
and retired, off the road, hangs out no sign of
refreshment for man and beast, but^ says, by all
possible hints and signs, I wish to be alone —
good-by — farewell. But the landlord can af
ford to live without privacy. He entertains no
private thought, he cherishes no solitary hour,
no Sabbath day, but thinks, — enough to assert
the dignity of reason, — and talks, and reads the
newspaper. What he does not tell to one trav
eller, he tells to another. He never wants to be
alone, but sleeps, wakes, eats, drinks, sociably,
still remembering his race. He walks abroad
through the thoughts of men, and the Iliad and
Shakspeare are tame to him, who hears the rude
but homely incidents of the road from every
traveller. The mail might drive through his
brain in the midst of his most lonely soliloquy,
without disturbing his equanimity, provided it
brought plenty of news and passengers. There
can be no jm>-fanity where there is no fane be
hind, and the whole world may see quite round
him. Perchance his lines have fallen to him in
dustier places, and he has heroically sat down
where two roads meet, or at the Four Corners,
or the Five Points, and his life is sublimely triv
ial for the good of men. The dust of travel

104 THE LANDLORD.

blows ever in his eyes, and they preserve their
clear, complacent look. The hourlies and half-
hourlies, the dailies and weeklies, whirl on well-
worn tracks, round and round his house, as if it
were the goal in the stadium, and still he sits
within in unruffled serenity, with no show of
retreat. His neighbor dwells timidly behind a
screen of poplars and willows, and a fence with
sheaves of spears at regular intervals, or defended
against the tender palms of visitors by sharp
spikes, — but the traveller's wheels rattle over
the door-step of the tavern, and he cracks his
whip in the entry. He is truly glad to see you,
and sincere as the bull's-eye over his door. The
traveller seeks to find, wherever he goes, some
one who will stand in this broad and catholic re
lation to him, who will be an inhabitant of the
land to hrrrxa stranger, and represent its human
nature, as the rock stands for its inanimate na
ture ; and this is he. As his crib furnishes prov
ender for the traveller's horse, and his larder
provisions for his appetite, so his conversation
furnishes the necessary aliment to his spirits.
He knows very well what a man wants, for he
is a man himself, and as it were the farthest
travelled, though he has never stirred from his
door. He understands his needs and destiny.
He would be well fed and lodged, there can be
no doubt, and have the transient sympathy of a

THE LANDLORD. 105

cheerful companion, and of a heart which always
prophesies fair weather. And after all the great
est men, even, want much more the sympathy
which every honest fellow can give, than that
which the great only can impart. If he is not
the most upright, let us allow him this praise,
that he is the most downright of men. He has
a hand to shake and to be shaken, and takes a
sturdy and unquestionable interest in you, as if
he had assumed the care of you, but if you will
break your neck, he will even give you the best
as to the method.

The great poets have not been ungrateful to
their landlords. Mine host of the Tabard Inn,
in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, was
an honor to his profession : —

" A semely man our Hoste was, with alle,

For to ban been^an marshal in an halle.

A large man he was, with eyen stepe ;

A fairer burgeis is ther non in Chepe :

Bold of his speche, and wise, and well ytaught,

And of manhood him lacked righte naught.

Eke thereto, was he right a mery man,

And after souper plaien he began,

And spake of mirthe amonges other thinges,

Whan that we hadden made our reckoninges."

He is the true house-band, and centre of the
company — of greater fellowship and practical
social talent than any. He it is that proposes

106 THE LANDLORD.

that each shall tell a tale to while away the
time to Canterbury, and leads them himself,
and concludes with his own tale : —

" Now, by my fader's soule that is (led,

But ye be mery, smiteth of my hed :

Hold up your hondes withouten more speche."

. "

* If we do not look up to the Landlord, we

look round for him on all emergencies, for he
is a man of infinite experience, who unites
hands with wit. He is a more public character
than a statesman, — a publican, and not conse
quently a sinner ; and surely, he, if any, should
be exempted from taxation and military duty.

Talking with our host is next best and in
structive to talking with one's self. It is a
more conscious soliloquy ; as it were, to speak
generally, and try what we would say provided
we had an audience. He has indulgent and
open ears, and does not require petty and par
ticular statements. " Heigho ! " exclaims the
traveller. Them's my sentiments, thinks mine
host, and stands ready for what may come
next, expressing the purest sympathy by his
demeanor. " Hot as blazes ! " says the other,

" Hard weather, sir, — not much stirring

nowadays," says he. He is wiser than to con
tradict his guest in any case ; he lets him go on,
he lets him travel.

THE LANDLORD. 107

The latest sitter leaves him standing far in
the night, prepared to live right on, while suns
rise and set, and his " good night " has as brisk
a sound as his " good morning;" and the earliest
riser finds him tasting his liquors in the bar ere
flies begin to buzz, with a countenance fresh as
the morning star over the sanded floor, — and
not as one who had watched all night for trav
ellers. And yet, if beds be the subject of con
versation, it will appear that no man has been
a sounder sleeper in his time.

Finally, as for his moral character, we do not
hesitate to say, that he has no grain of vice or
meanness in him, but represents just that de
gree of virtue which all men relish without be
ing obliged to respect. He is a good man, as
his bitters are good, — an unquestionable good
ness. Not what is called a good man, — good
to be considered, as a work of art in galleries
and museums, — but a good fellow, that is,
good to be associated with. Who ever thought
of the religion of an innkeeper — whether he was
joined to the Church, partook of the sacrament,
said his prayers, feared God, or the like ? No
doubt he has had his experiences, has felt a
change, and is a firm believer in the persever
ance of the saints. In this last, we suspect,
does the peculiarity of his religion consist But
he keeps an inn, and not a conscience. v^How

108 THE LANDLORD.

many fragrant charities and sincere social vir
tues are implied in this daily offering of him
self to the public. He cherishes good will to
all, and gives the wayfarer as good and honest
advice to direct him on his road as the priest.

To conclude, the tavern will compare favor
ably with the church. The church is the place
where prayers and sermons are delivered, but
the tavern is where they are to take effect, and
if the former are good, the latter cannot be bad.

Library.

: :- v "-' .
tZBZzzzzzxzzzX^

A WINTER WALK.

[1843.]

THE wind has gently murmured through the
blinds, or puffed with feathery softness against
the windows, and occasionally sighed like a
summer zephyr lifting the leaves along, the live
long night. The meadow-mouse has slept in
his snug gallery in the sod, the owl has sat in a
hollow tree in the depth of the swamp, the rab
bit, the squirrel, and the fox have all been
housed. The watch-dog has lain quiet on the
hearth, and the cattle have stood silent in their
stalls. The earth itself has slept, as it were its
first, not its last sleep, save when some street-
sign or wood-house door has faintly creaked
upon its hinge, cheering forlorn nature at her
midnight work, — the only sound awake twixt
Venus and Mars, — advertising us of a remote
inward warmth, a divine cheer and fellowship,
where gods are met together, but where it is very
bleak for men to stand. But while the earth
has slumbered, all the air has been alive with
feathery flakes descending, as if some northern

110 A WINTER WALK.

Ceres reigned, showering her silvery grain over
all the fields.

We sleep, and at length awake to the still
reality of a winter morning. The snow lies
warm as cotton or down upon the window-sill ;
the broadened sash and frosted panes admit a
dim and private light, which enhances the snug
cheer within. The stillness of the morning is
impressive. The floor creaks under our feet as
we move toward the window to look abroad
through some clear space over the fields. We
see the roofs stand under their snow burden.
From the eaves and fences hang stalactites of
snow, and in the yard stand stalagmites cover
ing some concealed core. The trees and shrubs
rear white arms to the sky on every side ; and
where were walls and fences, we see fantastic
forms -stretching in frolic gambols across the
dusky landscape, as if nature had strewn her
fresh designs over the fields by night as models
for man's art.

Silently we unlatch the door, letting the drift
fall in, and step abroad to face the cutting air.
Already the stars have lost some of their sparkle,
and a dull, leaden mist skirts the horizon. A
lurid brazen light in the east proclaims the ap
proach of day, while the western landscape is
dim and spectral still, and clothed in a sombre
Tartarian light, like the shadowy realms. • They

A WINTER WALK. Ill

are Infernal sounds only that you hear, — the
crowing of cocks, the barking of dogs, the chop
ping of wood, the lowing of kine, all seem to
come from Pluto's barn-yard and beyond the
Styx ; — not for any melancholy they suggest,
l)ut their twilight bustle is too solemn and mys
terious for earth. The recent tracks of the fox
or otter, in the yard, remind us that each hour
of the night is crowded with events, and the
primeval nature is still working and making
tracks in the snow. Opening the gate, we tread
briskly along the lone country road, crunching
the.' dry and crisped snow under our feet, or
aroused by the sharp clear creak of the wood-
sled, just starting for the distant market, from
the early farmer's door, where it has lain the
summer long, dreaming amid the chips and
stubble ; while far through the drifts and pow
dered windows we see the farmer's early candle,
like a paled star, emitting a lonely beam, as if
some severe virtue were at its matins there.
And one by one the smokes begin to ascend
from th£ chimneys amidst the trees and snows.

The sluggish smoke curls up from some deep dell,
The stiffened air exploring in the dawn,
And making slow acquaintance with the day ;
Delating now upon its heavenward course,
In* wreathed loiterings dallying with itself,
With as uncertain purpose and slow deed,

112 A WINTER WALK.

As its half-wakened master by the hearth,
Whose mind still slumbering and sluggish thoughts
Have not yet swept into the onward current
Of the new day ; — and now it streams afar,
The while the chopper goes with step direct^
And mind intent to swing the early axe.

First in the dusky dawn he sends abroad
His early scout, his emissary, smoke,
The earliest, latest pilgrim from the roof,
To feel the frosty air, inform the day ;
And while he crouches still beside the hearth,
Nor musters courage to unbar the door,
It has gone down the glen with the light wind,
And o'er the plain unfurled its venturous wreath,
Draped the tree-tops, loitered upon the hill,
And warmed the pinions of the early bird ;
And now, perchance, high in the crispy air,
Has caught sight of the day o'er the earth's edge,
And greets its master's eye at his low door,
As some refulgent cloud in the upper sky.

We hear the sound of wood-chopping at the
farmers' doors, far over the frozen earth, the bay
ing of the house-dog, and the distant clarion of
the cock. Though the thin and frosty air cpn-
veys only the finer particles of sound to our
ears, with short and sweet vibrations, as the
waves subside soonest on the purest and lightest
liquids, in which gross substances sink to the
bottom. They come clear and bell-like, and
from a greater distance in the horizon, as if
there were fewer impediments than in summer

A WINTER WALK. 113

to make them faint and ragged. The ground is
sonorous, like seasoned wood, and even the or
dinary rural sounds are melodious, and the jing
ling of the ice on the trees is sweet and liquid.
There is the least possible moisture in the at
mosphere, all being dried up, or congealed, and
it is of such extreme tenuity and elasticity, that
it becomes a source of delight. The withdrawn
and tense sky seems groined like the aisles of a
cathedral, and the polished air sparkles as if
there were crystals of ice floating in it. As they
who have resided in Greenland tell us, that,
when it freezes, " the sea smokes like burning
turf-land, and a fog or mist arises, called frost-
smoke," which " cutting smoke frequently raises
blisters on the face and hands, and is very per
nicious to the health." But this pure stinging
cold is an elixir to the lungs, and not so much a
frozen mist, as a crystallized midsummer haze,
refined and purified by cold.

The sun at length rises through the distant
woods, as if with the faint clashing swinging
sound of cymbals, melting the air with his
beams, and with such rapid steps the morning
travels, that already his rays are gilding 'the
distant western mountains. Meanwhile we step
hastily along through the powdery snow, warmed
by an inward heat, enjoying an Indian summer
still, in the increased glow of thought and feel-
8

114 A WINTER WALK.

ing. Probably if our lives were more conformed
to nature, we should not need to defend our
selves against her heats and colds, but find her
our constant nurse and friend, as do plants and
quadrupeds. If our bodies were fed with pure
and simple elements, and not with a stimulating
and heating diet, they would afford no more
pasture for cold than a leafless twig, but thrive
like the trees, which find even winter genial to
their expansion.

The wonderful purity of nature at this season
is a most pleasing fact. Every decayed stump
and moss-grown stone and rail, and the dead
leaves of autumn, are concealed by a clean nap
kin of snow. In the bare fields and tinkling
woods, see what virtue survives. In the coldest
and bleakest places, the warmest charities still
maintain a foothold. A cold and searching
wind drives away all contagion, and nothing
can withstand it but what has a virtue in it;
arid accordingly, whatever we meet with in cold
and bleak places, as the tops of mountains, we
respect for a sort of sturdy innocence, a Puritan
toughness. All things beside seem to be called
in for shelter, and what stays out must be part
of the original frame of the universe, and of
such valor as God himself. It is invigorating to
breathe the cleansed air. Its greater fineness
and purity are visible to the eye, and we would

A WINTER WALK. 115

fain stay out long and late, that the1- gales may
sigh through us, too, as through the leafless trees,
and fit us for the winter: — as if we hoped so
to borrow some pure and steadfast virtue, which
will stead us in all seasons.

There is a slumbering subterranean fire in
nature which never goes out, and which no cold
can chill. It finally melts the great snow, and
in January or July is only buried under a thicker
or thinner covering. In the coldest day it flows
somewhere, and the snow melts around every
tree. This field of winter rye, which sprouted
late in the fall, and now speedily dissolves the
snow, is where the fire is very thinly covered.
We feel warmed by it. In the winter, warmth
stands for all virtue, and we resort in thought to
a trickling rill, with its bare stones shining in
the sun, and to warm springs in the woods, with
as much eagerness as rabbits and robins. The
steam which rises from swamps and pools*, is as
dear and domestic as that of our own kettle.
What fire could ever equal the sunshine of a
winter's day, when the meadow mice come out
by the wallsides, and the chicadee lisps in the
defiles of the wood ? The warmth comes di
rectly from the sun, and is not radiated from the
earth, as in summer ; and when we feel his
beams on our backs as we are treading some
snowy dell, we are grateful as for a special kind-

116 A WINTER WALK.

ness, and bless the sun which has followed us
into that by-place.

This subterranean fire has its altar in each
man's breast, for in the coldest day, and on the
bleakest hill, the traveller cherishes a warmer fire
within the folds of his cloak than is kindled on
any hearth. A healthy man, indeed, is the com
plement of the seasons, and in winter, summer
is in his heart. There is the south. Thitlier
have all birds and insects migrated, and around
the warm springs in his breast are gathered the
robin and the lark.

At length, having reached the edge of the
woods, and shut out the gadding town, we enter
within their covert as we go under the roof of a
cottage, and cross its threshold, all ceiled and
banked up with snow. They are glad and warm
still, and as genial and cheery in winter as in
summer. As we stand in the midst of the pines,
in the flickering and checkered light which strag
gles but little way into their maze, we wonder
if the towns have ever heard their simple story.
It seems to us that no traveller has ever explored
them, and notwithstanding^he wonders which
science is elsewhere revealing every day, who
would not like to hear their annals? Oar hum
ble villages in the plain are their contribution.
We borrow from the forest the boards which
shelter, and the sticks which warm us. How

A WINTER WALK. 117

important is their evergreen to the winter, that
portion of the summer which does not fade, the
permanent year, the unwithered grass. Thus
simply, and with little expense of altitude, is the
surface of the earth diversified. What would
human life be without forests, those natural
cities ? From the tops of mountains they ap
pear like smooth shaven lawns, yet whither shall
we walk but in this taller grass ?

In this glade covered with bushes of a year's
growth, see how the silvery dust lies on every
seared leaf and twig, deposited in such infinite
and luxurious forms as by their very variety
atone for the absence of color. Observe the tiny
tracks of mice around every stem, and the tri
angular tracks of the rabbit. A pure elastic
heaven hangs over all, as if the impurities of
the summer sky, refined and shrunk by the
chaste winter's cold, had been winnowed from
the heavens upon the earth.

Nature confounds her summer distinctions at
this season. The heavens seem to be nearer the
earth. 'The elements are less reserved and dis
tinct. Water turns to ice, rain to snow. The
day is but a Scandinavian night. The winter
is an arctic summer.

V-How much more living is the life that is in
nature-pXhe furred life which still survives the
stinging nights, and, from amidst fields and

118 A WINTER WALK.

woods covered with frost and snow, sees the
sun rise.

" The foodless wilds
Pour forth their brown inhabitants."

The gray squirrel and rabbit are brisk and play
ful in the remote glens, even on the morning of
the cold Friday. Here is our Lapland and Lab
rador, and for our Esquimaux and Knistenaux,
Dog-ribbed Indians, Novazemblaites, and Spitz-
bergeners, are there not the ice-cutter and wood-
chopper, the fox, musk-rat, and mink ?

Still, in the midst of the arctic day, we may
trace the summer to its retreats, and sympathize
with some contemporary life. Stretched over the
brooks, in the midst of the frost-bound meadows,
we may observe the submarine cottages of the
caddice-worms, the larvaB of the Plicipennes.
Their small cylindrical cases built around them
selves, composed of flags, sticks, grass, and with
ered leaves, shells, and pebbles, in form and
color like the wrecks which strew the bottom, —
now drifting along overjhe pebbly bottom, now
whirling in tiny eddies and dashing down steep
falls, or sweeping rapidly along with the current,
or else swaying to and fro at the end of some
grass-blade or root. Anon they will leave their
sunken habitations, and, crawling up the stems
of plants, or to the surface, like gnats, as perfect

A WINTER WALK. 119

•

insects henceforth, flutter over the surface of
the water, or sacrifice their short lives in the
flame of our candles at evening. Down yonder
little glen the shrubs are drooping under their
burden, and the red alder-berries contrast with
the white ground. Here are the marks of a
myriad feet which have already been abroad.
The sun rises as proudly over such a glen, as
over the valley of the Seine or the Tiber, and it
seems the residence of a pure and self-subsistent
valor, such as they never witnessed ; which never
knew defeat nor fear. Here reign the simplicity
and purity of a primitive age, and a health and
hope far remote from towns and cities. ' \ Stand
ing quite alone, far in the forest, while the
wind is shaking down snow from the trees,
and leaving the only human tracks behind us,
we find our reflections of a richer variety
than the life of cities. \ The chicadee and nut
hatch are more inspiring society than statesmen
and philosophers, and we shall return to these
last, as to more vulgar companions. In this
lonely glen, with its brook draining the slopes,
its creased ice and crystals of all hues, where
the spruces and hemlocks stand up on either
side, and the rush and sere wild oats in the
rivulet itself, our lives are more serene and
worthy to contemplate.

As the day advances, the heat of the sun is

120 A WINTER WALK.

reflected by the hill-sides, and we hear a faint
but sweet music, where flows the rill released
from its fetters, and the icicles are melting on
the trees ; and the nuthatch and partridge are
heard and seen. The south wind melts the
snow at noon, and the bare ground appears
with its withered grass and leaves, and we are
invigorated by the perfume which exhales from
it, as by the scent of strong meats.

Let us go into this deserted woodman's hut,
and see how he has passed the long winter
nights and the short and stormy days. For
here man has lived under this south hill-side,
and it seems a civilized and public spot. We
have such associations as when the traveller
stands by the ruins of Palmyra or Hecatornpolis.
Singing birds and flowers perchance have begun
to appear here, for flowers as well as weeds fol
low in the footsteps of man. These hemlocks
whispered over his head, these hickory logs were
his fuel, and these pitch-pine roots kindled his
fire ; yonder fuming rill in the hollow, whose
thin and airy vapor still ascends as busily as
ever, though he is far off now, was his well.
These hemlock boughs, and the straw upon this
raised platform, were his bed, and this broken
dish held his drink. But he has not been here
this season, for the phaebes built their nest upon
this shelf last summer. I find some embers left,

A WINTER WALK. 121

as if he had but just gone out, where he baked
his pot of beans ; and while at evening he smoked
his pipe, whose stemless bowl lies in the ashes,
chatted with his only companion, if perchance
he had any, about the depth of the snow on the
morrow, already falling fast and thick without,
or disputed whether the last sound was the
screech of an owl, or the creak of a bough, or
imagination only ; and through this broad chim
ney throat, in the late winter evening, ere he
stretched himself upon the straw, he looked up
to learn the progress of the storm, and, seeing
the bright stars of Cassiopeia's chair shining
brightly down upon him, fell contentedly asleep.
See how many traces from which we may
learn the chopper's history. From this stump
we may guess the sharpness of his axe, and,
from the slope of the stroke, on which side he
stood, and whether he cut down the tree with
out going round it or changing hands ; and,
from the flexure of the splinters, we may know
which way it fell. This one chip contains in
scribed on it the whole history of the wood-
chopper and of the world. On this scrap of
paper, which held his sugar or salt, perchance,
or was the wadding of his gun, sitting on a log
in the forest, with what interest we read the tat
tle of cities, of those larger huts, empty and to
let, like this, in High Streets and Broadways.

122 A WINTER WALK.

The eaves are dripping on the south side of this
simple roof, while the titmouse lisps in the pine,
and the genial warmth of the sun around the
door is somewhat kind and human.

After two seasons, this rude dwelling does not
deform the scene. Already the birds resort to it,
to build their nests, and you may track to its
door the feet of many quadrupeds. Thus, for a
long time, nature overlooks the encroachment
and profanity of man. The wood still cheer
fully and unsuspiciously echoes the strokes of
the axe that fells it, and while they are few and
seldom, they enhance its wildness, and all the
elements strive to naturalize the sound.

Now our path begins to ascend gradually to
the top of this high hill, from whose precipitous
south side we can look over the broad country,
of forest and field and river, to the distant
snowy mountains. See yonder thin column of
smoke curling up through the woods from some
invisible farm-house ; the standard raised over
some rural homestead. There must be a warmer
and more genial spot there below, as where we
detect the vapor from a spring forming a cloud
above the trees. What fine relations are estab
lished between the traveller who discovers this
airy column from some eminence in the forest,
and him who sits below. Up goes the smoke
as silently and naturally as the vapor exhales

A WINTER WALK. 123

from the leaves, and as busy disposing itself in
wreathes as the housewife on the hearth below.
It is a hieroglyphic of man's life, and suggests
more intimate and important things than the
boiling of a pot. Where its fine column rises
above the forest, like an ensign, some human
life has planted itself, — and such is the begin
ning of Rome, the establishment, of the arts, and
the foundation of empires, whether on the prai
ries of America, or the steppes of Asia.

And now we descend again to the brink of
this woodland lake, which lies in a hollow of the
hills, as if it were their expressed juice, and that
of the leaves, which are annually steeped in it.
Without outlet or inlet to the eye, it has still its
history, in the lapse of its waves, in the rounded
pebbles on its shore, and in the pines which
grow down to its brink. It has not been idle,
though sedentary, but, like Abu Musa, teaches
that " silting still at home is the heavenly way ;
the going out is the way of the world." Yet in
its evaporation it travels as far as any. In sum
mer it is the earth's liquid eye ; a mirror in the
breast of nature. The sins of the wood are
washed out in it. See how the woods form an
amphitheatre about it, and it is an arena for all
the genialness of nature. All trees direct the
traveller^ to its brink, all paths seek it out, birds
fly to it, quadrupeds flee to it, and the very

124 A WINTER WALK.

ground inclines toward it, It is nature's saloon,
where she has sat down to her toilet. Consider
her silent economy and tidiness ; how the sun
comes with his evaporation to sweep the dust
from its surface each morning, and a fresh sur
face is constantly welling up; and annually,
after whatever impurities have accumulated
herein, its liquid transparency appears again in
the spring. In summer a hushed music seems
to sweep across its surface. But now a plain
sheet of snow conceals it from our eyes, except
where the wind has swept the ice bare, and the
sere leaves are gliding from side to side, tacking
and veering on their tiny voyages. Here is one
just keeled up against a pebble on shore, a dry
beech-leaf, rocking still, as if it would start
again. A skilful engineer, methinks, might pro
ject its course since it fell from the parent stem.
Here are all the elements for such a calculation.
Its present position, the direction of the wind,
the level of the pond, and how much more is
given. In its scarred edges and veins is its log
rolled up.

We fancy ourselves in the interior of a larger
house. The surface of the pond is our deal
table or sanded floor, and the woods rise abruptly
from its edge, like the walls of a cottage. The
lines set to catch pickerel through the ice look
like a larger culinary preparation, and the men

A WINTER WALK. 125

stand about on the white ground like pieces of
forest furniture. The actions of these men, at
the distance of half a mile over the ice and
snow, impress us as when we read the exploits
of Alexander in history. They seem not un
worthy of the scenery, and as momentous as the
conquest of kingdoms.

Again we have wandered through the arches
of the wood, until from its skirts we hear the
distant booming of ice from yonder bay of the
river, as if it were moved by some other and
subtler tide than oceans know. To me it has a
strange sound of home, thrilling as the voice of
one's distant and noble kindred. A mild su -.Ti
mer sun shines over forest and lake, and though
there is but one green leaf for many rods,'yet
nature enjoys a serene health. Every sound is
fraught with the same mysterious assurance of
health, as well now the creaking of the boughs
in January, as the soft sough of the wind in July.

When Winter fringes every bough

With his fantastic wreath,

. And puts the seal of silence now

Upon the leaves beneath ;

When every stream in its pent-house

Goes gurgling on its way,
And in his gallery the mouse

Nibbleth the meadow hay ;

Methinks the summer still is nigh,
And lurketh underneath,

126 A WINTER WALK.

As that same meadow- mo use doth lie
Snug in that last year's heath.

And if perchance the chicadee

Lisp a faint note anon,
The snow is summer's canopy,

Which she herself put on.

Fair blossoms deck the cheerful trees,
And dazzling fruits depend,

The north wind sighs a summer breeze,
The nipping frosts to fend,

Bringing glad tidings unto mej
The while I stand all ear,

Of a serene eternity,
Which need not winter fear.

Out on the silent pond straightway
The restless ice doth crack,

And pond sprites merry gambols play
Amid the deafening rack.

I

Eager I hasten to the vale,
As if I heard brave news,

How nature held high festival,
Which it were hard to lose.

I gambol with my neighbor ice,
And sympathizing quake,

As each new crack darts in a trice
Across the gladsome lake.

One with the cricket in the ground,
And fagot on the hearth,

Resounds the rare domestic sound
Along the forest path.

A WINTER WALK. 127

Before night we will take a journey on skates
along the course of this meandering river, as full
of novelty to one who sits by the cottage fire all
the .winter's day, as if it were over the polar ice,
with Captain Parry or Franklin ; following the
winding of the stream, now flowing amid hills,
now spreading out into fair meadows, and form
ing a myriad coves 'and bays where the pine and
hemlock overarch. The river flows in the rear
of the towns, and we see all things from a new
and wilder side. The fields and gardens come
down to it with a frankness, and freedom from
pretension, wThich they do not wear on the high
way. It is the outside and edge of the earth.
Our eyes are not offended by violent contrasts,
The last rail of the farmer's fence is some sway
ing willow bough, which still preserves its fresh
ness, and here at length all fences stop, and we
no longer cross any road. We may go far up
within the country now by the most retired and
level road, never climbing a hill, but by broad
levels ascending to the upland meadows. It is
a beautiful illustration of the law of obedience,
the flow of a river ; the path for a sick man, a
highway down which an acorn cup may float
secure with its freight. Its slight occasional
falls, whose precipices would not diversify the
landscape, are celebrated by mist and spray, and
attract the traveller from far and near. From

128 A WINTER WALK.

the remote interior, its current conducts him by
broad and easy steps, or by one gentle inclined
plane, to the sea. Thus by an early and con
stant yielding to the inequalities of the ground,
it secures itself the easiest passage.

No domain of nature is quite closed to man
at all times, and now we draw near to the em
pire of the fishes. Our feet glide swiftly over
unfathomed depths, where in summer our line
tempted the pout and perch, and where the
stately pickerel lurked in the long corridors
formed by the bulrushes. The deep, impenetra
ble marsh, where the heron waded, and bittern
squatted, is made pervious to our swift shoes, as
if a thousand railroads had been made into it.
With one impulse we are carried to the cabin
of the musk-rat, that earliest settler, and see
him dart away under the transparent ice, like a
furred fish, to his hole in the bank ; and we glide
rapidly over meadows where lately " the mower
whet his scythe," through beds of frozen cran
berries mixed with meadow grass. We skate
near to where the blackbird, the pewee, and the
kingbird hung their nests over the water, and the
hornets builded from the maple in the swamp.
How many gay warblers following the sun, have
radiated from this nest of silver-birch and thistle
down. On the swamp's outer edge was hung
the supermarine village, where no foot pene-

A WINTER WALK. 129

trated. In this hollow tree the wood-duck reared
her brood, and slid away each day to forage in
yonder fen.

In winter, nature is a cabinet of curiosities,
full of dried specimens, in their natural order
and position. The meadows and forests are a
hortus siccus. The leaves and grasses stand
perfectly pressed by the air without screw or
gum, and the birds' nests are not hung on an
artificial twig, but where they builded them.
We go about dryshod to inspect the summer's
work in the rank, swamp, and see what a growth
have got the alders, the willows, and the maples;
testifying to how many warm suns, and fertiliz
ing dews and showers. See what strides their
boughs took in the luxuriant summer, — and
anon these dormant buds will carry them on
ward and upward another span into the heavens.

Occasionally we wade through fields of snow,
under whose depths the river is lost for many
rods, to appear again to the right or left, where
we least expected ; still holding on its way
underneath, with a faint, stertorous, rumbling
sound, as if, like the bear and marmot, it too
had hibernated, and we had followed its faint
summer-trail to where it earthed itself in snow
and ice. At first we should have thought that
rivers would be empty and dry in midwinter, or
else frozen solid till the spring thawed them ;
9

130 A WINTER WALK.

but their volume is not diminished even, for
only a superficial cold bridges their surface.
The thousand springs which feed the lakes and
streams are flowing still. The issues of a few
surface springs only are closed, and they go to
swell the deep reservoirs. Nature's wells are
below the frost. The summer brooks are not
filled with snow-water, nor does the mower
quench bis thirst with that alone. The streams
are swollen when the snow melts in the spring,
because nature's work has been delayed, the
water being turned into ice ajid snow, whose
particles are less smooth and round, and do not
find their level so soon.

Far over the ice, between the hemlock woods
and snow-clad hills, stands the pickerel fisher,
his lines set in some retired cove, like a Fin-
lander, with his arms thrust into the pouches
of his dreadnought ; with dull, snowy, fishy
thoughts, himself a finless fish, separated a few
inches from his race ; dumb, erect, and made to
be enveloped in clouds and snows, like the pines
on shore. In these wild scenes, men stand about
in the scenery, or move deliberately and heavily,
having sacrificed the sprightliness and vivacity
of towns to the dumb sobriety of nature. He
does not make the scenery less wild, more than
the jays and musk-rats, but stands there as a
part of it, as the natives are represented in the

A WINTER WALK. 131

voyages of early navigators, at Nootka Sound,
and on the Northwest coast, with their fur,
about them, before they were tempted to loquac
ity by a scrap of iron. He belongs to the nat
ural family of man, and is planted deeper in
nature and has more root than the inhabitants
of towns. Go to him, ask what luck, and you
will learn that he too is a worshipper of the un-»
seen. Hear with what sincere deference and
waving gesture in his tone, he speaks of the
lake pickerel, which he has never seen, his prim
itive and ideal race of pickerel. He is connected
with the shore still, as by a fish-line, and yet re
members the season when he took fish through
the ice on the pond, while the peas were up in
his garden at home.

But now, while we have loitered, the clouds
have gathered again, and a few straggling show-
flakes are beginning to descend. Faster and
faster they fall, shutting out the distant objects
from sight. The snow falls on every wood and
field, and no crevice is forgotten; by the river
and the pond, on the hill and in the valley.
Quadrupeds are confined to their coverts, and
the birds sit upon their perches this peaceful
hour. There is not so much sound as in fair
weather, but silently and gradually every slope,
and the gray walls and fences, and the polished
ice, and the sere leaves, which were not buried

132 A WINTER WALK.

before, are concealed, and the tracks of men and
beasts are lost. With so little effort does nature
reassert her rule and blot out the traces of men.
Hear how Homer has described the same. " The
snow-flakes fall thick and fast on a winter's day.
The winds are lulled, and the snow falls inces
sant, covering the tops of the mountains, and
the hills, and the plains where the lotus-tree
grows, and the cultivated fields, and they are
falling by the inlets and shores of the foaming
sea, but are silently dissolved by the waives."
The snow levels all things, and infolds them
deeper in the bosom of nature, as, in the slow
summer, vegetation creeps up to the entablature
of the temple, and the turrets of the castle, and
helps her to prevail over art.

The surly night-wind rustles through the
wood, and warns us to retrace our steps, while
the sun goes down behind the thickening storm,
and birds seek their roosts, and cattle their stalls.

" Drooping the lab'rer ox

Stands covered o'er with snow, and now demands
The fruit of all his toil."

Though winter is represented in the almanac
as an old man, facing the wind and sleet, and
drawing his cloak about him, we rather think of
him a^s a merry wood-chopper, and warm-blooded
youth, as blithe as summer. The unexplored

A WINTER WALK. . 133

grandeur o£ the. storm keeps up the spirits of
the traveller. It does not trifle with us, but has
a sweet earnestness. In winter we lead a more
inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery,
like cottages under drifts, whose windows and
doors are half concealed, but from whose chim
neys the smoke cheerfully ascends. The im
prisoning drifts increase the sense of comfort
which the house affords, and in the coldest days
we are content to sit over the hearth and see
the sl|y through the chimney top, enjoying the
quiet and serene life that may be had in a warm
corner by the chimney side, or feeling our pulse
by listening to the low of cattle in the street, or
the sound of the flail in distant barns all the long
afternoon. No doubt a skilful physician could
determine our health by observing how these
simple and natural soupds affected us. We
enjoy now, not an oriental, but a boreal leisure,
around warm stoves and fireplaces, and watch
the shadow of motes in the sunbeams.

Sometimes our fate grows too homely and
familiarly serious ever to be cruel. Consider
how for three months the human destiny is
wrapped in fufcs. The good Hebrew Revelation
takes no cognizance of all this cheerful snow.
Is there no religion for the temperate and frigid
zones ? We know of no scripture wjjich records
the pure benignity of the gods on a New Eng-

134 A WINTER WALK.

land winter night. Their praises have never
been sung, only their wrath deprecated. The
best scripture, after all, records but a meagre
faith. Its 'saints live reserved and austere. Let
a brave devout man spend the year in the woods
of Maine or Labrador, and see if the Hebrew
Scriptures speak adequately to his condition and
experience, from the setting in of winter to the
breaking up of the ice.

Now commences the long winter evening
around the farmer's hearth, when the thoughts
of the indwellers travel far abroad, and men are
by nature and necessity charitable and liberal
to all creatures. Now is the happy resistance
to cold, when the farmer reaps his reward,
and thinks of his preparedness for winter,
and, through the glittering panes, sees with
equanimity " the mansion of the northern bear,"
for now the storm is over,

" The full ethereal round,
Infinite worlds disclosing to the view,
Shines out intensely keen ; and all one cope
Of starry glitter glows from pole to pole."

THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES.*

[I860.]

EVERY man is entitled to come to Cattle-
show, even a transcendentalist ; and for my part
I am more interested in the men than in the
cattle. I wish to see once more those old famil
iar faces, whose names I do not know, which for
me represent the Middlesex country, and come
as near being indigenous to the soil as a white
man can ; the men who are not above their busi
ness, whose coats are not too black, whose shoes
do not shine very much, who never wear gloves
to conceal their hands. It is true, there are
some queer specimens of humanity attracted to
our festival, but all are welcome. I am pretty
sure to meet once more that weak-minded and
whimsical fellow, generally weak-bodied too,
who prefers a crooked stick for a cane; per
fectly useless, you would say, only bizarre, fit
for a cabinet, like a petrified snake. A ram's
horn would be as convenient, and is yet more
curiously twisted. He brings that much in
dulged bit of the country with him, from some
town's end or other, and introduces it to Con-

* An Address read to the Middlesex Agricultural Society, in Con
cord, September, 1860.

136 THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES.

cord groves, as if he had promised it so much
sometime. So some, it seems to me, elect their
rulers for their crookedness. But I think that a
straight stick makes the best cane, and an up
right man the best ruler. Or why choose a man
to do plain work who is distinguished for his
oddity ? However, I do not know but you will
think that they have committed this mistake
who invited me to speak to you to-day.

In my capacity of surveyor, I have often
talked with s<5me of you, my employers, at your
dinner-tables, after having gone round and round
and behind your farming, and ascertained exactly
what its limits were. Moreover, taking a sur
veyor's and a naturalist's liberty, I have been in
the habit of going across your lots much oftener
than is usual, as many of you, perhaps to your
sorrow, are aware. Yet many of you, to my
relief, have seemed not to be aware of it ; and
when I came across you in some out-of-the»way
nook of your farms, have inquired, with an air
of surprise, if I were not lost, since you had
never seen me in that part of the town or county
before ; when, if the truth were known, and it
had not been for betraying my secret, I might
with more propriety have inquired if you were
not lost, since I had never seen you there before.
I have several times shown the proprietor the
shortest way out of his wood-lot.

THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES. 137

Therefore, it would seem that I have some
title to speak to you to-day ; and considering
what that title is, and the occasion that has
called us together, I need offer no apology if I
invite your attention, for -the few moments that
are allotted me, to a purely scientific subject.

At those dinner-tables referred to, I have often
been asked, as many of you have been, if I
could tell how it happened, that when a pine
wood was cut down an oak one commonly
sprang up, and vice versa. To which I have
answered, and now answer, that I can tell, —
that it is no mystery to me. As I am not aware
that this has been clearly shown by any one, I
shall lay the more stress on this point. Let me
lead you back into your wood-lots again.

When, hereabouts, a single forest tree or a
forest springs up naturally where none of its
kind grew before, I do not hesitate to say,
though in some quarters still it may sound par
adoxical, that it came from a seed. Of the va
rious ways by which trees are known to be prop
agated, — by transplanting, cuttings, and the like,
— this is the only supposable one under these
circumstances. No such tree has ever been
known to spring from anything else. If any
one asserts that it sprang from something else,
or from nothing, the burden of proof lies with
him.

138 THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES.

It remains, then, only to show howthe seed is
transported from where it grows, to where it is
planted. This is done chiefly by the agency of
the wind, water, and animals. The lighter seeds,
as those of pines and maples, are transported
chiefly by wind and water; the heavier, as acorns
and nuts, by animals.

In all the pines, a very thin membrane, in ap
pearance much like an insect's wing, grows over
and around the seed, and independent of it,
while the latter is being developed within its
base. Indeed this is often perfectly developed,
though the seed is abortive ; nature being, you
would say, more sure to provide the means of
transporting the seed, than to provide the seed
to be transported. In other words, a beautiful
thin sack is woven around the seed, with a han
dle to it such as the wind can take hold of, and
it is then committed to the wind, expressly that
it may transport the seed and extend the range
of the species ; and this it does, as effectually, as
when seeds are sent by mail in a different kind
of sack from the patent-office. There is a pat
ent-office at the seat of government of the uni
verse, whose managers are as much interested
in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Wash
ington can be, and their operations are infinitely
more extensive and regular.

There is then no necessity for supposing that

THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES. 139

the pines have sprung up from nothing, and I
am aware that I am not at all peculiar in assert
ing that they come from seeds, though the mode
of their propagation by nature has been but little
attended to. They are very extensively raised
from the seed in Europe, and are beginning to
be here.

When you cut down an oak wood, a pine
wood will not at once spring up there unless
there are, or have been, quite recently, seed-bear
ing pines near enough for the seeds to be blown
from them. But, adjacent to a forest of pines,
if you prevent other crops from growing there,
you will surely have an extension of your pine
forest, provided the soil is suitable.

As for the heavy seeds and nuts which are not
furnished with wings, the notion is still a very
common one that, when the trees which bear
these spring up where none of their kind were
noticed before, they have come from seeds or
other principles spontaneously generated there
in an unusual manner, or which have lain dor
mant in the soil for centuries, or perhaps been
called into activity by the heat of a burning. I
do not believe these assertions, and I will state
some of the ways in which, according to my
observation, such forests are planted and raised.

Every one of these seeds, too, will be found
to be winged or legged in another fashion.

140 THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES.

Surely it is not wonderful that cherry-trees of
all kinds are widely dispersed, since their fruit
is well known to be the favorite food of various
birds. Many kinds are called bird-cherries, and
they appropriate many -more kinds, which are
not so called*-A Eating cherries is a bird-like
employment, and unless we disperse the seeds
occasionally, as they do, I shall think that the
birds have the best right to them.^ See how art
fully the seed of a cherry is placed in order that
a bird may be compelled to transport it — in the
very midst of a tempting pericarp, so that the
creature that would devour this must commonly
take the stone also into its mouth or bill. If
you ever ate a cherry, and did not make two
bites of it, you must have perceived it — right
in the centre of the luscious morsel, a large
earthy residuum left on the tongue. We thus
take into our mouths cherry stones as big as
peas, a dozen at once, for Nature can persuade
us to do almost anything when she would com
pass her ends. Some wild men and children
instinctively swallow these, as the birds do when
in a hurry, it being the shortest way to get rid
of them. Thus, though these seeds are not pro
vided with vegetable wings, Nature has impelled
the thrush tribe to take them into their bills and
fly away with them ; and they are winged in
another sense, and more effectually than the

THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES. 141

seeds of pines, for these are carried even against
the wind. The consequence is, that cherry-trees
grow"hot only here but4;here. The same is true
of a great many other seeds.

But to come to the observation which sug
gested these remarks. As I have said, I sus
pect that I can throw some light on the fact,
that when hereabouts a dense pine wood is cut
down, oaks and other hard woods may at once
take its place. I have got only to show that
the acorns and nuts, provided they are grown in
the neighborhood, are regularly planted in such
woods ; for I assert that if an oak-tree has not
grown within ten miles, and man has not car
ried acorns thither, then an oak wood will not
spring up at once, when a pine wood is cut
down.

Apparently, there were only pines there be
fore. They are cut off, and after a year or two
you see oaks ano! other hard woods springing
up there, with scarcely a pine amid them, and
the wonder commonly is, how the seed could
have lain in the ground so long without decay
ing. • Bat the truth is, that it has not lain in the
ground so long, but is regularly planted each
year by various quadrupeds and birds.

In this neighborhood, where oaks and pines
are about equally dispersed, if you look through
the thickest pine wood, even the seemingly

142 THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES.

unmixed pitch-pine ones, you will commonly
detect many little oaks, birches, and other
hard woods, sprung frem seeds carried* into
the thicket by squirrels and other animals,
and also blown thither, but which are over
shadowed and choked by the pines. The denser
the evergreen wood, the more likely it is to
be well planted with these seeds, because the
planters incline to resort with their forage to the
closest covert. They also carry it into birch and
other woods. This planting is carried on an
nually, and the oldest seedlings annually die ;
but when the pines are cleared off, the oaks,
having got just the start they want, and now
secured favorable conditions, immediately spring
up to trees.

The shade of a dense pine wood, is more
unfavorable to the springing up of pines of the
same species than of oaks within it, though the
former may come up abundantly when the pines
are cut, if there chance to be sound seed in the
ground.

But when you cut off a lot of hard wood,
very often the little pines mixed with it have
a similar start, for the squirrels have carried off
the nuts to the pines, and not to the more open
wood, and they commonly make pretty clean
work of it ; and moreover, if the wood was old,
the sprouts will be feeble or entirely fail ; to say

THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES. 143

nothing about the soil being, in a measure, ex
hausted for this kind of crop.

If a pine wood is surrounded by a white oak
one chiefly, white oaks may be expected to suc
ceed when the pines are cut. If it is surrounded
instead by an edging of shrub-oaks, then you
will probably have a dense shrub-oak thicket.

I have no time to go into details, but will say,
in a word, that while the wind is conveying the
seeds of pines into hard woods and open lands,
the squirrels and other animals are conveying
the seeds of oaks and walnuts into the pine
woods, and thus a rotation of crops is kept up.

I affirmed this confidently many years ago,
and an occasional examination of dense pine
woods confirmed me jn my opinion. It has
long been known to observers that squirrels
bury nuts in the ground, but I am not aware
that any one has thus accounted for the regular
succession of forests.

On the 24th of September, in 1857, as I was
paddling down the Assabet, in this town, I saw
a red squirrel run along the bank under some
herbage, with something large in its mouth.
It stopped near the foot of a hemlock, within
a couple of rods of me, and, hastily pawing a
hole with its forefeet, dropped its booty into
it, covered it up, and retreated part way up the
trunk of the tree. As I approached the shore

144 THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES.

to examine the "deposit, the squirrel, descending
part way, betrayed no little anxiety about its
treasure, and made two or three motions to
recover it before it finally retreated. Digging
there, I found two green pig-nuts joined to
gether, with the thick husks on, buried about
an inch and a half under the reddish soil
of decayed hemlock leaves, — just the right
depth to plant it. In short, this squirrel was
then engaged in accomplishing two objects, to
wit, laying up a store of winter food for itself,
and planting a hickory Wood for all creation.
If the squirrel was killed, or neglected its de
posit, a hickory would spring up. The nearest
hickory tree was twenty rods distant. These
nuts were there still just fourteen days later, but
were gone when I looked again, November 21,
or six weeks later still. »

I have since examined more carefully several
dense woods, which are said to be, and are ap
parently exclusively pine, and always with the
same result. For instance, I walked the same
day to a small, but very dense and handsome
white-pine grove, about fifteen rods square, in
the east part of this town. The trees are large
for Concord, being from ten to twenty inches in
diameter, and as exclusively pine as any wood
that I know. Indeed, I selected this wood be
cause I thought it the least likely to contain

THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES. 145

anything else. It stands on an open plain or
pasture, except that it adjoins another small
pine wood, which has a few little oaks in it,
on the southeast side. On every other side, it
was at least thirty rods from the nearest woods.
Standing on the edge of this grove and looking
through it, for it is quite level and free from
underwood, for the most part bare, red-carpeted
ground, you would have said that there was not
a hard wood tree in it, young or old. But on
looking carefully along over its floor I discov
ered, though it was not till my eye had got used
to the search, that, alternating with thin ferns,
and small blueberry bushes, there was, not mere
ly here and there, but as often as every five feet
and with a degree of regularity, a little oak,
from three to twelve inches high, and in one
place I found a green acorn dropped by the
base of a pine.

I confess, I was surprised to find my theory so
perfectly proved in this case. One of the prin
cipal agents in this planting, the red squirrels,
were all the while curiously inspecting me, while
I was inspecting their plantation. Some of the
little oaks had been browsed by cows, which re
sorted to this wood for sjiade.

After seven or eight years, the hard woods
evidently find such a locality unfavorable to
their growth, the pines being allowed to stand.
10

146 THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES.

As an evidence of this, I observed a diseased
red-maple twenty-five feet long, which had been
recently prostrated, though it was still covered
with green leaves, the only maple in any posi
tion in the wood.

But although these oaks almost invariably die
if the pines are not cut down, it is probable that
they do better for a few years under their shelter
than they would anywhere else.

The very extensive and thorough experiments
of the English, have at length led them to adopt
a method of raising oaks almost precisely like
this, which somewhat earlier had been adopted
by nature and her squirrels here ; they have
simply rediscovered the value of pines as nurses
for oaks. The English experimenters seem
early and generally, to have found out the
importance of using trees of some kind, as
nurse-plants for the young oaks. I quote from
Loudon what he describes as " the ultimatum
on the subject of planting and sheltering oaks,"
— " an abstract of the practice adopted by the
government officers in the national forests " of
England, prepared by Alexander Milne.

At first some oaks had been planted by them
selves, and others mixed with Scotch pines ;
" but in all cases," says Mr. Milne, " where
oaks were planted actually among the pines,
and surrounded by them, [though the soil might

THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES. 147

be inferior,] the oaks were found to be much
the best." " For several years past, the plan
pursued has been to plant the inclosures with
Scotch pines only, [a tree very similar to our
pitch-pine,] and when the pines have got to the
height of five or six feet, then to put in good
strong oak plants of about four or five years'
growth among the pines, — not cutting away
any pines at first, unless they happen to be so
strong and thick as to overshadow the oaks.
In about two years, it becomes necessary to
shred the branches of the pines, to give light
and air to the oaks, and in about two or three
more years to begin gradually to remove the
pines altogether, taking out a certain number
each year, so that, at the end of twenty or twen
ty-five years, not a single Scotch pine shall be
left ; although, for the first ten or twelve years, the
plantation may have appeared to contain noth
ing else but pine. The advantage of this mode
of planting has been found to be that the pines
dry and ameliorate the soil, destroying the coarse
grass and brambles which frequently choke and
injure oaks ; and that no mending over is neces
sary, as scarcely an oak so planted is found to
fail."

Thus much the English planters have discov
ered by patient experiment, and, for aught I
know, they have taken out a patent for it ; but

148 THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES.

they appear not to have discovered that it
was discovered before, and that they are merely
adopting the method of Nature, which she long
ago made patent to all. She is all the while
planting the oaks amid the pines without our
knowledge, and at last, instead of government
officers, we send a party of wood-choppers to
cut down the pines, and so rescue an oak forest,
at which we wonder as if it had dropped from
the skies.

As I walk amid hickories, even in August, I
hear the sound of green pig-nuts falling from
time to time, cut off by the chickaree over my
head. In the fall, I notice on the ground, either
within or in the neighborhood of oak woods, on
all sides of the town, stout oak twigs three or
four inches long, bearing half-a-dozen empty
acorn-cups, which twigs have been gnawed off
by squirrels, on both sides of the nuts, in order
to make them more portable. The jays scream
and the red squirrels scold while you are clubbing
and shaking the chestnut trees, for they are there
on the same errand, and two of a trade never
agree. I frequently see a red or gray squirrel
cast down a gre&n chestnut bur, as I am going
through the woods, and I used to think, some
times, that they were cast at me. In fact, they
are so busy about it, in the midst of the chest
nut season, that you cannot stand long in the

THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES. 149

woods without hearing one fall. A sportsman
told me that he had, the day before, — that was
in the middle of October, — seen a green chest
nut bur dropt on our great river meadow, fifty
rods from the nearest wood, and much further
from the nearest chestnut-tree, and he could
not tell how it came there. Occasionally,
when chestnutting in midwinter, I find thirty
or forty nuts in a pile, left in its gallery, just
under the leaves, by the common wood-mouse
(mus leucopus).

But especially, in the winter, the extent to
which this transportation and planting of nuts
is carried on is made apparent by the snow. In
almost every wood, you will see where the red
or gray squirrels have pawed down through the
snow in a hundred places, sometimes two feet
deep, and almost always directly to a nut or a
pine-cone, as directly as if they had started from
it and bored upward, — which you and I could
not have done. It would be difficult for us to
find one before the snow falls. Commonly, no
doubt, they had deposited them there in the fall.
You wonder if they remember the localities, or
discover them by the scent. The red squirrel
commonly has its winter abode in the earth
under a thicket of evergreens, frequently under
a small clump of evergreens in the midst of a
deciduous wood. If there are any nut-trees,

150 THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES.

which still retain their nuts, standing at a dis
tance without the wood, their paths often lead
directly to and from them. We, therefore, need
not suppose an oak standing here and there in
the wood in order to seed it, but if a few stand
within twenty of thirty rods of it, it is sufficient.

I think that I may venture to say that every
white-pine cone that falls to the earth naturally
in this town, before opening and losing its seeds,
and almost every pitch-pine one that falls at all,
is cut off by a squirrel, and they begin to pluck
them long before they are ripe, so that when the
crop of white-pine cones is a small one, as it
commonly is, they cut off thus almost every one
of these before it fairly ripens. I think, more
over, that their design, if I may so speak, in cut
ting them off green, is, partly, to prevent their
opening and losing their seeds, for these are the
ones for which they dig through the snow, and
the only white-pine cones which contain any
thing then. I have counted in one heap, within
a diameter of four feet, the cores of 239 pitch-
pine cones which had been cut off and stripped
by the red squirrel the previous winter.

The nuts thus left on the surface, or buried
just beneath it, are placed in the most favorable
circumstances for germinating. I have some
times wondered how those which merely fell on
the surface of the earth got planted ; but, by the

THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES. 151

end of December, I find the chestnut of the same
year partially mixed with the mould, as it were,
under the decaying and mouldy leaves, where
there, is all the moisture and manure they want,
for the nuts fall first. In a plentiful year, a large
proportion of the nuts are thus covered loosely
an inch deep, and are, of course, somewhat con
cealed from squirrels. One winter, when the
crop had been abundant, I got, with the aid of
a rake, many quarts of these nuts as late as the
tenth of January, and though some bought at the
store the same day were more than half of them
mouldy, I did not find a single mouldy one among
these which I picked from under the wet and
mouldy leaves, where they had been snowed on
once or twice. Nature knows how to pack them
best. They were still plump and tender. Ap
parently, they do not heat there, though wet. In
the spring they were all sprouting.

Loudon says that " when the nut [of the com
mon walnut of Europe] is to ,be preserved
through the winter for the purpose of planting
in the following spring, it should be laid in a rot-
heap, as soon as gathered, with the husk on ;
and the heap should be turned over frequently
in the course of the winter."

Here, again, he is stealing Nature's "thunder."
How can a poor mortal do otherwise ? for it is
she that finds fingers to steal with, and the treas-

152 THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES.

ure to be stolen. In the planting of the seeds of
most trees, the best gardeners do no more than
follow Nature, though they may not know it.
Generally, both large and small ones are most
sure to germinate, and succeed best, when only
beaten into the earth with the back of a spade,
and then covered with leaves or straw. These
results to which planters have arrived, remind us
of the experience of Kane and his companions
at the North, who, when learning to live in that
climate, were surprised to find themselves stead
ily adopting the customs of the natives, simply
becoming Esquimaux. So, when we experiment
in planting forests, we find. ourselves at last do
ing as Nature does. Would it not be well to
consult with Nature in the outset ? for she is the
most extensive and experienced planter of us all,
not excepting the Dukes of Athol.

In short, they who have not attended particu
larly to this subject are but little aware to what
an extent quadrupeds and birds are employed,
especially in the fall, in collecting, and so dissem
inating and planting the seeds of trees. It is
the almost constant employment of the squirrels
at that season and you rarely meet with one
that has not a nut in its mouth, or is not just
going to get one. One squirrel-hunter of this
town told me that he knew of a walnut-tree
which bore particularly good nuts, but that on

THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES. 153

going to gather them one fall, he found that he
had been anticipated by a family of a dozen red
squirrels. He took out of the tree, which was
hollow, one bushel and three pecks by measure
ment, without the husks, and they supplied him
and his family for the winter. It would be easy
to multiply instances of this kind. How com
monly in the fall you see the cheek-pouches of
the striped squirrel distended by a quantity of
nuts ! This species gets its scientific name Ta-
miaSj or the steward, from its habit of storing up
nuts and other seeds. Look under a nut-tree a
month after the nuts have fallen, and see what
proportion of sound nuts to the abortive ones
and shells you will find ordinarily. They have
been already eaten, or dispersed far and wide.
The ground looks like a platform before a gro
cery, where the gossips of the village sit to crack
nuts and less savory jokes. You have come,
you would say, after the feast was over, and are
presented with the shells only.

Occasionally, when threading the woods in
the fall, you will hear a sound as if some one
had broken a twig, and, looking up, see a jay
pecking at an acorn, or you will see a flock of
them at once about it, in the top of an oak, and
hear them break them off. They then fly to a
suitable limb, and placing the acorn under one
foot, hammer away at' it busily, making a sound

154 THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES.

like a woodpecker's tapping, looking round from
time to time to see if any foe is approaching,
and soon reach the meat, and nibble at it, hold
ing up their heads to swallow, while they hold
the remainder very firmly with their claws. Nev
ertheless, it often drops to the ground before the
bird has done with it. I can confirm what Wm.
Bartram wrote to Wilson, the Ornithologist, that
" The jay is one of the most useful agents in the
economy of nature, for disseminating forest trees
and other nuciferous and hard-seeded vegetables
on which they feed. Their chief employment
during the autumnal season is foraging to sup
ply then* winter stores. In performing this ne
cessary duty they drop abundance of seed in their
flight over fields, hedges, and by fences, where
they alight to deposit them in the post-holes, &c.
It is remarkable what numbers of young trees rise
up in fields and pastures after a wet winter and
spring. These birds alone are capable, in a few
years' time, to replant all the cleared lands."

I have noticed that squirrels also frequently
drop their nuts in open land, which will still
further account for the oaks and walnuts which
spring up in pastures, for, depend on it, every,
new tree comes from a seed. When I examine
the little oaks, one or two years old, in such
places, I invariably find the empty acorn from
which they sprung.

THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES. 155

So far from the seed having lain dormant in
the soil since oaks grew there before, as many
believe, it is well known that it is difficult to
preserve the vitality of acorns long enough to
transport them to Europe ; and it is recom
mended in Loudon's Arboretum, as the safest
course, to sprout them in pots on the voyage.
The same authority states that " very few acorns
of any species will germinate after having been
kept a year," that beechmast, " only retains its
vital properties one year," and the black-walnut,
" seldom more than six months after it has ri
pened." I have frequently found that in Novem
ber, almost every acorn left on the ground had
sprouted or decayed. What with frost, drouth,
moisture, and worms, the greater part are soon
destroyed. Yet it is stated by one botanical
writer that " acorns that have lain for centuries,
on being ploughed up, have soon vegetated."

Mr. George B. Emerson, in his valuable Report
on the Trees and Shrubs of this State, says of the
pines : " The tenacity of life of the seeds is re
markable. They will remain for many years un
changed in the ground, protected by the coolness
and deep shade of the forest above them. But
when the forest is removed, and the warmth of
the sun admitted, they immediately vegetate."
Since he does not tell us on what observation
his remark is founded, I must doubt its truth.

156 THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREKS.

Besides, the experience of nurserymen makes it
the more questionable.

The stories of wheat raised from seed buried
with an ancient Egyptian, and of raspberries
raised from seed found in the stomach of a man
in England, who is supposed to have died six
teen or seventeen hundred years ago, are gen
erally discredited, simply because the evidence is
not conclusive.

Several men of science, Dr. Carpenter among
them, have used the statement that beach-plums
sprang up in sand which was dug up forty miles
inland in Maine, to prove that the seed had lain
there a very long time, and some have inferred
that the coast has receded so far. But it seems
to me necessary to their argument to show, first,
that beach-plums grow only on a beach. They
are not uncommon here, which is about half that
distance from the shore ; and I remember a dense
patch a few miles north of us, twenty-five miles
inland, from which the fruit was annually car
ried to market. How much further inland they
grow, I know not. Dr. Chas. T. Jackson speaks
of finding " beach-plums " (perhaps they were
this kind) more than one hundred miles inland
in Maine.

It chances that similar objections lie against
all the more notorious instances of the kind on
record.

THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES. 157

Yet I am prepared to believe that some seeds,
especially small ones, may retain their vitality
for centuries under favorable circumstances. In
the spring of 1859, the old Hunt House, so
called, in this town, whose chimney bore the
date 1703, was taken down. This stood on
land which belonged to John Winthrop, the first
Governor of Massachusetts, and a part of the
house was evidently much older than the above
date, and belonged to the Winthrop family.
For many years, I have ransacked this neigh
borhood for plants, and I consider myself famil
iar with its productions. Thinking of the seeds
which are said to be sometimes dug up at an
unusual depth in the earth, and thus to repro
duce long extinct plants, it occurred to me last
fall that some new or rare plants might have
sprung up in the ceUar of this house, which had
been covered from the light so long. Searching
there on the 22d of September, I found, among
other rank weeds, a species of nettle ( Urtica
urens), which I had not found before ; dill, which
I had not seen growing spontaneously ; the Je
rusalem oak ( Chenopodium botrys), which I had
seen wild in but one place ; black nightshade
(Solanuryi nigrum), which is quite rare here
abouts, and common tobacco, which, though
it was often cultivated here in the last century,
has for fifty years been an unknown plant in

158 THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES.

this town, and a few months before this not
even I had heard that one man in the north
part of the town, was cultivating a few plants
for his own use. I have no doubt that some or
all of these plants sprang from seeds which had
long been buried under or about that house, and
that that tobacco is an additional evidence that
the plant was formerly cultivated here. The
cellar has been filled up this year, and four of
those plants, including the tobacco, are now
again extinct in that locality.

It is true, I have shown that the animals con
sume a great part of the seeds of trees, and so}
at least, effectually prevent their becoming trees ;
but in all these cases, as I have said, the con
sumer is compelled to be at the same time the
disperser and planter, and this is the tax which
he pays to nature. I think it is Lmna?us, who
says, that while the swine is rooting for acorns,
he is planting acorns.

Though I do not believe that a plant will
spring up where no seed has been, I have great
faith in a seed — a, to me, equally mysterious ori
gin for it. Convince me that you have a seed
there, and I am prepared to expect wonders. I
shall even believe that the millennium is at
hand, and that the reign of justice is about to
commence, when the Patent Office, or Govern
ment, begins to distribute, and the people to
plant the seeds of these things.

THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES. 159

In the spring of 1857, I planted six seeds sent
to me from the Patent Office, and labelled, I
think, " Poitrine jaune grosse" large yellow
squash. Two came up, and one bore a squash
which weighed 123| pounds, the other bore four,
weighing together 186| pounds. Who would
have believed that there was 310 pounds of
poitrine jaune grosse in that corner of my gar
den? These seeds were the bait I used to
catch it, rny ferrets which I sent into its burrow,
my brace of terriers which unearthed it. A
little mysterious hoeing and manuring was all
the abra cadabra presto-change, that I used, and
lo ! true to the label, they found for me 310
pounds of poitrine jaune grosse there, where it
never was known to be, nor was before. These
talismen had perchance sprung from America at
first, and returned to it with unabated force.
The big squash took a premium at your fair
that fall, and I understood that the man who
bought it, intended to sell the seeds for ten cents
a piece. (Were they not cheap at that?) But
I have more hounds of the same breed. I learn
that one which I despatched to a distant town,
true to its instinct, points to the large yellow
squash there, too, where no hound ever found it
before, as its ancestors did here and in France.

Other seeds I have which will find other
things in that corner of my garden, in like

160 THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES.

fashion, almost any fruit you wish, every year
for ages, until the crop more than fills the whole
garden. You have but little more to do, than
throw up your cap for entertainment these
American days. Perfect alchemists I keep,
who can transmute substances without end ;
and thus the corner of my garden is an inex
haustible treasure-chest. Here you can dig, not
gold, but the value which gold merely repre
sents ; and there is no Signor Blitz about it
Yet farmers' sons will stare by the hour to see a
juggler draw ribbons from his throat, though he
tells them it is all deception. Surely, men love
darkness rather than light

WALKING.

[1862.]

I WISH to speak a word for Nature, for abso
lute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with
a freedom and culture merely civil, — to regard
man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of
Nature, rather than a member of society. I
wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may
make an emphatic one, for there are enough
champions of civilization : the minister and the
school-committee, and every one of you will
take care of that.

I have met with but one or two persons in
the course of my life who understood the art of
Walking, that is, of taking walks, — who had a
genius, so to speak, for sauntering : which word
is beautifully derived "from idle people who
roved about the country, in the Middle Ages,
and asked charity, under pretence of going d la
Sainte Terre" to the Holy Land, till the chil
dren exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte- Terr er"
a Saunterer, — a Holy-Lander. They who
never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as
11

162 WALKING.

they pretend^ are indeed mere idlers and vaga
bonds ; but they who do go there are saunterers
in the good sense, such as I mean. Some,
however, would derive the word from sans terre,
without land or a home, which, therefore, in the
good sense, will mean, having no particular
home, but equally at home everywhere. For
this is the secret of successful sauntering. He
who sits still in a house all the time may be the
greatest vagrant of all ; but the saunterer, in the
good sense, is no more vagrant than the mean
dering river, which is all the while sedulously
seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I
prefer the first, which, indeed, is the most prob
able derivation. For every walk is a sort of
crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in
us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land
from the hands of the Infidels.

It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders,
even the walkers, nowadays, who undertake no
persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our ex
peditions are but tours, and come round again
at evening to the old hearth-side from which we
set out. Half the walk is but retracing our
steps. We should go forth on the shortest
walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adven
ture, never to return, — prepared to send back
our embalmed hearts' only as relics to our deso
late kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father

WALKING. 163

and mother, and brother and sister, and wife
and child and friends, and never see them again,
— if you have paid your debts, and made your-
will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free
man, then you are ready for a walk.

To come down to my own experience, my
companion and I, for I sometimes have a com
panion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves
knights of a new, or rather an old, order, — not
Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Hitters or riders,
but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable
class, I trust. The chivalric and heroic spirit
which once belonged to the Elder seems now to
reside in, or perchance to have subsided into,
the Walker, — not the Knight, but Walker Er
rant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside of
Church and State and People.

We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts
practised this noble art ; though, to tell the truth,
at least, if their own assertions are to be received,
most of my townsmen would fain walk some
times, as I doj but they cannot. No wealth can
buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and indepen
dence, which are the capital in this profession. It
comes only by the grace of God. It requires a
direct dispensation from Heaven to become a
walker. You must be born into the family of
the Walkers. Ambulator nascitur, non ft. Some
of my townsmen, it is true, can remember and

164 WALKING.

have described to me some walks which they
took ten years ago, in which they were so blessed
as to lose themselves for half an hour in the
woods ; but I know very well that they have
confined themselves to the highway ever since,
whatever pretensions they may make to belong
to this select class. No doubt they were ele
vated for a moment as by the reminiscence of a
previous state of existence, when even they were
foresters and outlaws.

" When he came to grene wode,

In a mery mornynge,
There he herde the notes small
Of byrdes mery syngynge.

". It is ferre gone, sayd Eobyn,

That I was last here ;
Me lyste a lytell for to shote
At the donne dere."

I think that I cannot preserve my health and
spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least, —
and it is commonly more than that, — sauntering
through the woods and over the hills and fields,
absolutely free from all worldly engagements.
You may safely say, A penny for your thoughts,
QI a thousand pounds. When sometimes I arn
reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers
stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but
all tl^prfternoon too, sitting with crossed legs,
so many of them, — as if the legs were made to

WALKING. 165

sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon, — I
think that they deserve some credit for not hav
ing all committed suicide long ago.

I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single
day without acquiring some rust, and when
sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the
eleventh hour of four o'clock in the afternoon,
too late to redeem the day, when the shades of
night were already beginning to be mingled with
the daylight, have felt as if I had committed
some sin to be atoned for, — I confess that I ani
astonished at the power of endurance, to say
nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neigh
bors who confine themselves to shops and offices
the whole day for weeks and months, ay, and
years almost together. I know not what man
ner of stuff' they are of, — sitting there now at
three o'clock in the afternoon, as if it were three
o'clock in the morning. Bonaparte may talk of
the three-o'clock-in-the-morning courage, but it
is nothing to the courage which can sit down
cheerfully at this hour in the afternoon 'over
against one's self whom you have known all
the morning, to starve out a garrison to whom
you are bound by such strong ties of sympathy*
I wonder that about this time, or say between
four and five o'clock in the afternoon, too late
for the morning papers and too early for the"
evening ones, there is not a general explosion

166 WALKING.

heard up and down the street, scattering a legion
of antiquated and house-bred notions and whims
to the four winds for an airing, — and so the
evil cure itself.

How womankind, who are confined to the
house still more than men, stand it I do not
know ; but I have ground to suspect that most
of them do not stand it at all. When, early in
a summer afternoon, we have been shaking the
dust of the village from the skirts of our gar
ments, making haste past those houses with
purely Doric or Gothic fronts, which have such
an air of repose afeout them, my companion
whispers that probably about these times their
occupants are all gone to bed. Then it is that I
appreciate the beauty and the glory of architec
ture, which itself never turns in, but forever
stands out and erect, keeping watch over the
slumberers.

No doubt temperament, and, above all, age,
have a good deal to do with it. As a man
grows older, his ability to sit still and follow in
door occupations increases. He grows vesper-
tinal in his habits as the evening of life ap
proaches, till at last he comes forth only just
before sundown, and gets all the walk that he
requires in half an hour.

But the walking of which I speak has nothing
in irakin to taking exercise, as it is called, as

WALKING. 167

the sick take medicine at stated hours, — as the
swinging of dumb-bells or chairs ; but is itself
the enterprise and adventure of the day. If you
would get exercise, go in search of the springs
of life. Think of a man's swinging dumb-bells
for his health, when those springs are bubbling
up in far-off pastures unsought by him !

Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which
is said to be the only beast which ruminates
when walking. When a traveller asked Words
worth's servant to show him her master's study,
she answered, " Here is his library, but his study
is out of doors."

Living much out of doors, in the sun and
wind, will no doubt produce a certain roughness
of character, — will cause a thicker cuticle to
grow over some of the finer qualities of our na
ture, as on the face and hands, or as severe man
ual labor robs the hands of some of their deli
cacy of touch. So staying in the house, on the
other hand, may produce a softness and smooth
ness, not to say thinness of skin, accompanied
by an increased sensibility to certain impressions.
Perhaps we should be more susceptible to some
influences important to our intellectual and
moral growth, if the sun had shone and the
wind blown on us a little less ; and no doubt it
is a nice matter to proportion rightly the thick
arid thin skin. But methinks that is a scurf that

168 WALKING.

will fall off fast enough, — that the natural rem
edy is to be found in the proportion which the
night bears to the day, the winter to the sum
mer, thought^ to experience. There will be so
much the more air and sunshine in our thoughts.
The callous palms of the laborer are conversant
with finer tissues of self-respect and heroism,
whose touch thrills the heart, than the languid
fingers of idleness. That is mere sentimentality
that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far
from the tan and callus of experience.

When we walk, we naturally go to the fields
and woods : what would become of us, if we
walked only in a garden or a mall ? Even some
sects of philosophers have felt the necessity of
importing the woods to themselves, since they
did not go to the woods. " They planted groves
and walks of Platanes," where they took subdi-
ales ambulationes in porticos open to the air.
Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to
the woods, if they do not carry us thither. I
am alarmed when it happens that I have walked
a mile into the woods bodily, without getting
there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would
fain forget all my morning occupations and my
obligations to society. But it sometimes hap-
"pens that I cannot easily shake off the village.
The thought of some work will run in my head,
and I am not where my body is, — I am out of

WALKING. 169

my senses. In my walks I would fain return to
my senses. What business have I in the woods,
if I am thinking of something out of the woods ?
I suspect myself, and cannot help a shudder,
when I find myself so implicated even in what
are called good works, — for this may sometimes
happen.

My vicinity affords many good walks ; and
though for so many years I have walked almost
every day, and sometimes for several days to
gether, I have not yet exhausted them. An ab
solutely new prospect is a great happiness, and
I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three
hours' walking will carry me to as strange a
country as I expect ever to see. A single farm
house which I had not seen before is sometimes
as good as the dominions of the King of Daho
mey. There is in fact a sort of harmony dis
coverable between the capabilities of the land
scape within a circle of ten miles' radius, or the
limits of an afternoon^walk, and the threescore
years and ten of human life. It will never be
come quite familiar to you.

Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so
called, as the building of houses, and the cut
ting down of the forest and of all large trees,
simply deform the landscape, and make it more
and more tame and cheap. A people who
would begin by burning the fences and let the

170 WALKING.

forest stand ! I saw the fences half consumed,
their ends lost in the middle of the prairie, and
some worldly miser with a surveyor looking
after his bounds, while heaven had taken place
around him, and he did not see the angels going
to and fro, but was looking for an old post-hole
in the midst of paradise. I looked again, and
saw him standing in the middle of a boggy,
stygian fen, surrounded by devils, and he had
found his bounds without a doubt, three little
stones, where a stake had been driven, and look
ing nearer, I saw that the Prince of Darkness
was his surveyor.

I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any
number of miles, commencing at my own door,
without going by any house, without crossing a
road except where the fox and the mink do : first
along by the river, and then the brook, and then
the meadow and the wood-side. There are
square miles in my vicinity which have no in
habitant. From many a hill I can see civili
zation and the abodes of man afar. The farm
ers and their works are scarcely more obvious
than woodchucks and their burrows. Man and
his affairs, church and state and school, trade
and commerce, and manufactures and agricul
ture, even politics, the most alarming of them
all, — I am pleased to see how little space they
occupy in the landscape. Politics is but a nar-

WALKING. 171

row field, and that still narrower highway yon
der leads to it. I sometimes direct the traveller
thither. If you would go to the political world,
follow the great road, — follow that market-man,
keep his dust in your eyes, and it will lead you
straight to it ; for it, too, has its place merely,
and does not occupy all space. I pass from it
as from a bean-field into the forest, and it is for
gotten. In one half-hour I can walk off to some
portion of the earth's surface where a man does
not stand from one year's end to another, and
there, consequently, politics are not, for they are
but as the cigar-smoke of a man.

The village is the place to which the roads
tend, a sort of expansion of the highway, as a
lake of a river. It is the body of which roads
are the arms and legs, — a trivial or quadrivial
place, the thoroughfare and ordinary of travel
lers. The word is from the Latin villa, which,
together with via, a way, or more anciently ved
and vella, Varro derives from veho, to carry, be
cause the villa is the place to and from which
things are carried. They who got their living
by teaming were said vellaturam facer e. Hence,
too, apparently, the Latin word vilis and our
vile ; also villain. This suggests what kind of
degeneracy villagers are liable to. They are
wayworn by the travel that goes by and over
them, without travelling themselves.

172 WALKING.

Some do not walk at all ; others walk in the
highways ; a few walk across lots. Roads are
made for horses and men of business. I do not
travel in them much, comparatively, because I
am not in a hurry to get to any tavern or grocery
or livery-stable or depot to which they lead. I
am a good horse to travel, but not from choice
a roadster. The landscape-painter uses the fig
ures of men to mark a road. He would not
make that use of my figure. I walk out into a
Nature such as the old prophets and poets, Menu,
Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may
name it America, but it is not America : neither
Americus Vespucius, nor Columbus, nor the rest
were the discoverers of it. There is a truer ac
count of it in mythology than in any history of
America, so called, that I have seen.

However, there are a few old roads that may
be trodden with profit, as if they led somewhere
now that they are nearly discontinued. There
is the Old Marlborough Road, which does not
go to Marlborough now, methinks, unless that
is Marlborough where it carries me. I am the
bolder to speak of it here, because I presume
that there are one or two such roads in every town.

THE OLD MARLBOROUGH ROAD.

Where they once dug for money,

But never found any ;

Where sometimes Martial Miles

WALKING. 173

Singly files,

And Elijah Wood,

I fear for no good :

No other man,

Save Elisha Dugan, —

O man of wild habits,

Partridges and rabbits,

Who hast no cares

Only to set snares,

Who liv'st all alone,

Close to the bone,

And where life is sweetest

Constantly eatest.

When the spring stirs my blood
With the instinct to travel,
I can get enough gravel

On the Old Marlborough Road.
Nobody repairs it,
For nobody wears it ;
It is a living way,
As the Christians say.

Not many there be
Who enter therein,

Only the guests of the
Irishman Quin.

What is it, what is it,

But a direction out there,

And the bare possibility
Of going somewhere ?

Great guide-boards of stone,
But travellers none :
Cenotaphs of the towns
Named on their crowns.
It is worth going to see
Where you might be.

174 WALKING.

What king

Did the thing,

I am still wondering ;

Set up how or when,

By what selectmen,

Gourgas or Lee,

Clark or Darby ?

They 're a great endeavor

To be something forever ;

Blank tablets of stone,

Where a traveller might groan,

And in one sentence

Grave all that is known ;

Which another might read,

In his extreme need.

I know one or two

Lines that would do,

Literature that might stand

All over the land,

Which a man could remember

Till next December,

And read again in the spring,

After the thawing.
If with fancy unfurled

You leave your abode,
You may go round the world
By the Old Marlborough Road.

At present, in this vicinity, the best part of
the land is not private property ; the landscape
is not owned, and the walker enjoys compara
tive freedom. But possibly the day will come
when it will be partitioned off into so-called
pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a

WALKING. 175

narrow and exclusive pleasure only, — when fen
ces shall be multiplied, and man-traps and other
engines invented to confine men to the public
road, and walking over the surface of God's
earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on
some gentleman's grounds. To enjoy a thing ex
clusively is commonly to exclude yourself from
the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our
opportunities, then, before the evil days come.

What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to
determine whither we will walk ? I believe that
there is a subtile magnetism in Nature, which, if
we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.
It is not indifferent to us which way we walk.
There is a right way ; but we are very liable
from heedlessness and stupidity to take the
wrong one. We would fain take that walk,
never yet taken by us through this actual world,
which is perfectly symbolical of the path which
we love to travel in the interior and ideal world ;
and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult to
choose our direction, because it does not yet
exist distinctly in our idea.

When I go out of the house for a walk, un
certain as yet whither I will bend my steps, and
submit myself to my instinct to decide for me,
I find, strange and whimsical as it may seem,
that I finally and inevitably settle southwest,

176 WALKING.

toward some particular wood or meadow or de
serted pasture or hill in that direction. My nee
dle is slow to settle, — varies a few degrees, and
does not always point due southwest, it is true,
and it has good authority for this variation, but
it always settles between west and south-south
west. The future lies that way to me, and the
earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that
side. The outline which would bound my walks
would be, not a circle, but a parabola, or rather
like one of those cometary orbits which have
been thought to be non-returning curves, in this
case opening westward, in which my house oc
cupies the place of the sun. I turn round and
round irresolute sometimes for a quarter of an
hour, until I decide, for a thousandth time, that
I will walk into the southwest or west. East
ward I go only by force ; but westward I go
free. Thither no business leads me. It is hard
for me to believe that I shall find fair landscapes
or sufficient wildness and freedom behind the
eastern horizon. I am not excited by the pros
pect of a walk thither; but I believe that the
forest which I see in the western horizon stretch
es uninterruptedly toward the setting sun, and
there are no towns nor cities in it of enough
consequence to disturb me. Let me live where
I will, on this side is the city, on that the wilder
ness, and ever T am leaving the city more and

WALKING. . 177

more, and withdrawing into the wilderness. 1
should not lay so much stress on this fact, if
I did not believe that something like this is
the prevailing tendency of my countrymen. I
must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Eu
rope. And that way the nation is moving, and I
may say that mankind progress from east to west.
Within a few years we have witnessed the phe
nomenon of a southeastward migration, in the
settlement of Australia; but this affects us as
a retrograde movement, and, judging from the
moral and physical character of the first genera
tion of Australians, has not yet proved a success
ful experiment. The eastern Tartars think that
there is nothing west beyond Thibet. "The
world ends there," say they, " beyond there is
nothing but a shoreless sea." It is unmitigated
East where they live.

We go eastward to realize history and study
the works of art and literature, retracing the
steps of the race ; we go westward as into the
future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure.
The Atlantic is a Lethean stream, in our pas
sage over which we have had an opportunity to
forget the Old World and its institutions. If we
do not succeed this time, there is perhaps one
more chance for the race left before it arrives on
the banks of the Styx ; and that is in the Lethe
of the Pacific, which is three times as wide.
12

178 WALKING.

I know not how significant it is, or how far it
is an evidence of singularity, that an individual
should thus consent in his pettiest walk with the
general movement of the race ; but I know that
something akin to the migratory instinct in birds
and quadrupeds, — which, in some instances, is
known to have affected the squirrel tribe, impel
ling them to a general and mysterious movement,
in which they were seen, say some, crossing the
broadest rivers, each on its particular chip, with
its tail raised for a sail, and bridging narrower
streams with their dead, — that something like
the furor which affects the domestic cattle in the
spring, and which is referred to a worm in their
tails, — affects both nations and individuals,
either perennially or from time to time. Not
a flock of wild geese cackles over our town, but
it to some extent unsettles the value of real
estate here, and, if I were a broker, I should
probably take that disturbance into account,

" Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken strange strondes."

Every sunset which I witness inspires me
with the desire to go to a West as distant and
as fair as that into which the sun goes down.
He appears to migrate westward daily, and
tempt us to follow him. He is the Great
Western Pioneer whom the nations follow.

WALKING. 179

We dream all night of those mountain-ridges
in the horizon, though they may be of vapor
only, which were last gilded by his rays. The
island of Atlantis, and the islands and gardens
of the Hesperides, a sort of terrestrial par
adise, appear to have been the Great West of
the ancients, enveloped in mystery and poetry.
Who has not seen in imagination, when look
ing into the sunset sky, the gardens of the Hes
perides, and the foundation of all those fables ?
Columbus felt the westward tendency more
strongly than any before. He obeyed it, and
found a New World for Castile and Leon. The
herd of men in those days scented fresh pastures
from afar.

" And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropped into the western bay ;
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue ;
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new."

Where on the globe can there be found an
area of equal extent with that occupied by
the bulk of our States, so fertile and so rich
and varied in its productions, and at the same
time so habitable by the European, as this
is ? Michaux, who knew but part of them,
says that " the species of large trees are rn^ich
more numerous in North America than in|Eu-
rope ; in the United States there are more than

180 WALKING.

one hundred and forty species that exceed thirty
feet in height ; in France there are but thirty
that attain this size." Later botanists more
than confirm his observations. Humboldt came
to America to realize his youthful dreams of
a tropical vegetation, and he beheld it in its
greatest perfection in the primitive forests of
the Amazon, the most gigantic wilderness on
the earth, which he has so eloquently described.
The geographer Guyot, himself a European,
goes farther, — farther than I am ready to fol
low him ; yet not when he says, — " As the
plant is made for the animal, as the vegetable
world is made for the animal world, America

is made for the man of the Old World

The man of the Old World sets out upon his
way. Leaving the highlands of Asia, he de
scends from station to station towards Europe.
Each of his steps is marked by a new civili
zation superior to the preceding, by a greater
power of development. Arrived at the Atlantic,
he pauses on the shore of this unknown ocean,
the bounds of which he knows not, and turns
upon his footprints for an instant." When he
has exhausted the rich soil of Europe, and rein-
vigorated himself, u then recommences his ad
venturous career westward as in the earliest
ages." So far Guyot.

From this western impulse coming in contact

WALKING. 181

with the barrier of the Atlantic sprang the com
merce and enterprise of modern times. The
younger Michaux, in his " Travels West of the
Alleghanies in 1802," says that the common
inquiry in the newly settled West was, " ' From
what part of the world have you come ? ' As
if these vast and fertile regions would naturally
be the place of meeting and common country
of all the inhabitants of the globe."

To use an obsolete Latin word, I might say,
Ex Orients lux ; ex Occidente FRUX. From the
East light; from the West fruit.

Sir Francis Head, an English traveller and
a Governor- General of Canada, tells us that
" in both the northern and southern hemi
spheres of the New World, Nature has not only
outlined her works on a larger scale, but has
painted the whole picture with brighter and
more costly colors than she used in delineating

and in beautifying the Old World The

heavens of America appear infinitely higher, the
sky is bluer, the air is fresher, the cold is intenser,
the moon looks larger, the stars are brighter,
the thunder is louder, the lightning is vivider,
the wind is stronger, the rain is heavier, the
mountains are higher, the rivers longer, the for
ests bigger, the plains broader." This statement
will do at least to set against Buffon's account
of this part of the world and its productions.

182 WALKING.

Linnaeus said long ago, " Nescio quae facies
Iceta, glabra plantis Americanis : I know not
what there is of joyous and smooth in the
aspect of American plants;" and I think that
in this country there are no, or at most very
few, Africaner bestioe, African beasts, as the
Romans called them, and that in this respect
also it is peculiarly fitted for the habitation
of man. We are told that within three miles
of the centre of the East-Indian city of Singa
pore, some of the inhabitants are annually car
ried off by tigers; but the traveller can lie down
in the woods at night almost anywhere in North
America without fear of wild beasts.

These are encouraging testimonies. If the
moon looks larger here than in Europe, prob
ably the sun looks larger also. If the heavens
of America appear infinitely higher, and the
stars brighter, I trust that these facts are sym
bolical of the height to which the philosophy
and poetry and religion of her inhabitants may
one day soar. At length, perchance, the imma
terial heaven will appear as much higher to the
American mind, and the intimations that star it
as much brighter. For I believe that climate
does thus react on man, — as there is something
in the mountain -air that feeds the spirit and
inspires. Will not man grow to greater perfec
tion intellectually as well as physically under

WALKING. 183

these influences? Or is it unimportant how
many foggy days there are in his life ? I
trust that we shall be more imaginative, that
our thoughts will be clearer, fresher, and more
ethereal, as our sky, — our understanding more
comprehensive and broader, like our plains, —
our intellect generally on a grander scale, like
our thunder and lightning, our rivers and moun
tains and forests, — and our hearts shall even
correspond in breadth and depth and grandeur
to our inland seas. Perchance there will ap
pear to the traveller something, he knows not
what, of Iceta and glabra, of joyous and se
rene, in our very faces. Else to what end does
the world go on, and why was America dis
covered ?

To Americans I hardly need to say, —

" Westward the star of empire takes its way."

As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think
that Adam in paradise was more favoiably sit
uated on the whole than the backwoodsman in
this country.

Our sympathies in Massachusetts are not
confined to New England ; though we may be
estranged from the South, we sympathize with
the West. There is the home of the younger
sons, as among the Scandinavians they took to
the sea for their inheritance. It is too late to

184 WALKING.

be studying Hebrew; it is more important to
understand even the slang of to-day.

Some months ago I went to see a pano
rama of the Rhine. It was like a dream of
the Middle Ages. I floated down its historic
stream in something more than imagination,
under bridges built by the Romans, and re
paired by later heroes, past cities and castles
whose very names were music to my ears, and
each of which was the subject of a legend.
There were Ehrenbreitstein and Rolandseck
and Coblentz, which I knew only in history.
They were ruins that interested me chiefly.
There seemed to come up from its waters
and its vine-clad hills and valleys a hushed
music as of Crusaders departing for the Holy
Land. I floated along under the spell of en
chantment, as if I had been transported to an
heroic age, and breathed an atmosphere of
chivalry.

Soon after, I went to see a panorama of the
Mississippi, and as I worked my way up the
river in the light of to-day, and saw the steam
boats wooding up, counted the rising cities,
gazed on the fresh ruins of Nauvoo, beheld
the Indians moving west across the stream,
and, as before I had looked up the Moselle
now looked up the Ohio and the Missouri,
and heard the legends of Dubuque and of

WALKING. 185

Wenona's Cliff, — still thinking more of the
future than of the past or present, — I saw that
this was a Rhine stream of a different kind ;
that the foundations of castles were yet to be
laid, and the famous bridges were yet to be
thrown over the river ; and I felt that this was
the heroic age itself ] though we know it not, for
the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest
of men.

The West of which I speak is but another
name for the Wild ; and what I have been pre
paring to say is, that in Wildness is the preser
vation of the World. Every tree sends its fibres
forth in search of the Wild. The cities import
it at any price. Men plough and sail for it.
From the forest and wilderness come the tonics
and barks which brace mankind. Our ancestors
were savages. The story of Romulus and Re
mus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaning
less fable. The founders of every State which
has risen to eminence have drawn their nourish
ment and vigor from a similar wild source. It
was because the children of the Empire were
not suckled by the wolf that they were con
quered and displaced by the children of the
Northern forests who were.

I believe in the forest, and in the meadow,
and in the night in which the corn grows. We

186 WALKING.

require an infusion of hemlock-spruce or arbor-
vitae in our tea. There is a difference between
eating and drinking for strength and from mere
gluttony. The Hottentots eagerly devour the
marrow of the koodoo and other antelopes raw,
as a matter of course. Some of our Northern
Indians eat raw the marrow of the Arctic rein
deer, as well as various other parts, including
the summits of the antlers, as vlong as they are
soft. And herein, perchance, they have stolen a
march on the cooks of Paris. They get what
usually goes to feed the fire. This is probably
better than stall-fed beef and slaughter-house
pork to make a man of. Give me a wildness
whose glance no civilization can endure, — as
if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured
raw.

There are some intervals which border the
strain of the wood -thrush, to which I would
migrate, — wild lands where no settler has squat
ted ; to which, methinks, I am already accli
mated.

The African hunter Cummings tells us that
the skin of the eland, as well as that of most
other antelopes just killed, emits the most de
licious perfume of trees and grass. I would
have every man so much like a wild antelope,
so much a part and parcel of Nature, that his
very person should thus sweetly advertise our

WALKING. 187

senses of his presence, and remind us of those
parts of Nature which he most haunts. I feel
no disposition to be satirical, when the trapper's
coat emits the odor of musquash even ; it is a
sweeter scent to me than that which commonly
exhales from the merchant's or the scholar's gar
ments. When I go into their wardrobes and
handle their vestments, I am reminded of no
grassy plains and flowery meads which they
have frequented, but of dusty merchants' ex
changes and libraries rather.

A tanned skin is something more than re
spectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color
than white for a man, — a denizen of the
woods. " The pale white man ! " I do not
wonder that the African pitied him. Darwin
the naturalist says, " A white man bathing by
the side of a Tahitian was like a plant bleached
by the gardener's art, compared with a fine, dark
green one, growing vigorously in the open fields."

Ben Jonson exclaims, —

" How near to good is what is fair ! "
So I would say, —

How near to good is what is wild !

Life consists with wildness. The most alive is
the wildest, Not yet subdued to man, its pres
ence refreshes him. One who pressed forward
incessantly and never rested from his labors,

188 WALKING.

who grew fast and made infinite demands on
life, would always find himself in a new country
or wilderness, and surrounded by the raw mate
rial of life. He would be climbing over the
prostrate stems of primitive forest-trees.

Hope and the future for me are not in lawns
and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities,
but in the impervious and quaking swamps.
When, formerly, I have analyzed my partiality
for some farm which I had contemplated pur
chasing, 1 have frequently found that I was
attracted solely by a few square rods of imper
meable and unfathomable bog, — a natural sink
in one corner of it. That was the jewel which
dazzled me. I derive more of my subsistence
from the swamps which surround my native
town than from the cultivated gardens in the
village. There are no richer parterres to my
eyes than the dense beds of dwarf andromeda
(Cassandra calyculata) which cover these ten
der places on the earth's surface. Botany can
not go farther than tell me the names of the
shrubs which grow there, — the high -blueberry,
panicled andromeda, lamb-kill, azalea, and rho-
doraj — all standing in the quaking sphagnum.
I often think that I should like to have my
house front on this mass of dull red bushes,
omitting other flower plots and borders, trans
planted spruce and trim box, even gravelled

WALKING. 189

walks, — to have this fertile spot under my
windows, not a few imported barrow-fulls of
soil only to cover the sand which was thrown
out in digging the cellar. Why not put my
house, my parlor, behind this plot, instead of
behind that meagre assemblage of curiosities,
that poor apology for a Nature and Art, which
I call my front-yard ? It is an effort to clear up
and make a decent appearance when the car
penter and mason have departed, though done
as much for the passer-by as the dweller within.
The most tasteful front-yard fence was never an
agreeable object of study to me ; the most elab
orate ornaments, acorn-tops, or what not, soon
wearied and disgusted me. Bring your sills up
to the very edge of the swamp, then, (though it
may not be the best place for a dry cellar,) so
that there be no access on that side to citizens.
Front-yards are not made to walk in, but, at most,
through, and you could go in the back way.

Yes, though you may think me perverse, if it
were proposed to me to dwell in the neighbor
hood of the most beautiful garden that ever hu
man art contrived, or else of a Dismal swamp, I
should certainly decide for the swamp. How
vain, then, have been all your labors, citizens,
for me!

My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the
outward dreariness. Give me the ocean, the

190 WALKING.

desert or the wilderness ! In the desert, pure
air and solitude compensate for want of moist
ure and fertility. The traveller Burton says of
it, — " Your morale improves; you become frank

and cordial, hospitable and single-minded

In the desert, spirituous liquors excite only dis
gust. There is a keen enjoyment in a mere
animal existence." They who have been trav
elling long on the steppes of Tartary say, —
" On reentering cultivated lands, the agitation,
perplexity, and turmoil of civilization oppressed
and suffocated us; the air seemed to fail us,
and we felt every moment as if about to die
of asphyxia." When I would recreate myself,
I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most
interminable, and, to the citizen, most dismal
swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place, —
a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the
marrow of Nature. The wild-wood covers the
virgin mould, — and the same soil is good for
men and for trees. A man's health requires as
many acres of meadow to his prospect as his
farm does loads of muck. There are the strong
meats on which he feeds. A town is saved, not
more by the righteous men in it than by the
woods and swamps that surround it. A town
ship where one primitive forest waves above?
while another primitive forest rots below, —
such a town is fitted to raise not only corn

WALKING. 191

and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for
the coming ages. In such a soil grew Homer
and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a
wilderness comes the Reformer eating locusts
and wild honey.

To preserve wild animals implies generally
the creation of a forest for them to dwell in or
resort to. So it is with man. A hundred years
ago they sold bark in our streets peeled from
our own woods. In the very aspect of those
primitive and rugged trees, there was, methinks,
a tanning principle which hardened and consol
idated the fibres of men's thoughts. Ah ! already
I shudder for these comparatively degenerate
days of my native village, when you cannot col
lect a load of bark of good thickness, — and we
no longer produce tar and turpentine.

The civilized nations — Greece, Rome, Eng
land — have been sustained by the primitive for
ests which anciently rotted where they stand.
They survive as long as the soil is not exhausted.
Alas for human culture ! little is to be expected
of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhaust
ed, and it is compelled to make manure of the
bones of its fathers. There the poet sustains
himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and
the philosopher comes down on his marrow-bones.

It is said to be the task of the American " to
work the virgin soil," and that " agriculture here

192 WALKING.

already assumes proportions unknown every
where else." I think that the farmer displaces
the Indian even because he redeems the meadow,
and so makes himself stronger and in some re
spects more natural. I was surveying for a man
the other day a single straight line one hundred
and thirty-two rods long, through a swamp, at
whose entrance might have been written the
words which Dante read over the entrance to
the infernal regions, — u Leave all hope, ye that
enter," — that is, of ever getting out again ; where
'at one time I saw my employer actually up to
his neck and swimming for his life in his prop
erty, though it was still winter. He had an
other similar swamp which I could not survey
at all, because it was completely under water,
and nevertheless, with regard to a third swamp,
which I did survey from a distance, he remarked
to me, true to his instincts, that he would not
part with it for any consideration, on account
of the mud which it contained. And that man
intends to put a girdling ditch round the whole
in the course of forty months, and so redeem it
by the magic of his spade. I refer to him only
as the type of a class.

The weapons with which we have gained
our most important victories, which should be
handed down as heirlooms from father to son,
are not the sword and the lance, but the bush-

WALKING. 193

whack, the turf-cutter, the spade, and the bog-hoe,
rusted with the blood of many a meadow, and
begrimed with the dust of many a hard-fought
field. The very winds blew the Indian's corn
field into the meadow, and pointed out the way
which he had not the skill to follow. He had
no better implement with which to intrench
himself in the land than a clam-shell. But the
farmer is armed with plough and spade.

In Literature it is only the wild that attracts
us. Dulness is but another name for tameness.
It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking in
" Hamlet" anof the " Iliad," in all the Scriptures
and Mythologies, not learned in the schools, that
delights us. As the wild duck is more swift and
beautiful than the tame, so is the wild — the
mallard — thought, which 'mid falling dews
wings its way above the fens. A truly -good
book is something as natural, and as unexpect
edly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a
wild flower discovered on the prairies of the
West or in the jungles of the East. Genius
is a light which makes the darkness visible, like
the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters
the temple of knowledge itself, — and not a
taper lighted at the hearth-stone of the race,
which pales before the light of common day.

English literatim e, from the days of the min
strels to the Lake Poets, — Chaucer and Spen-

13

194 WALKING.

ser and Milton, and even Shakspeare, included,

— breathes notquite fresh and in this sense wild
strain. It is an essentially tame and civilized
literature, reflecting Greece and Rome. Her
wilderness is a green wood, — her wild man a
Robin Hood. There is plenty of genial love of
Nature, but not so much of Nature herself. Her
chronicles inform us when her wild animals, but
not when the wild man in her, became extinct.

The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry
is another thing. The poet to-day, notwith
standing all the discoveries of science, and the
accumulated learning of mankind, enjoys no
advantage over Homer.

Where is the literature which gives expres
sion to Nature? He would be a poet who
could impress the winds and streams into his
service, to speak for him ; who nailed words to
their primitive senses, as farmers drive down
stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved ;
who derived his words as often as he used them,

— transplanted them to his page with earth ad
hering to their roots ; whose words were so true
and fresh and natural that they would appear to
expand like the buds at the approach of spring,
though they lay half-smothered between two
musty leaves in a library, — ay, to bloom and
bear fruit there, after their kind, annually, for
the faithful reader, in sympathy with surround
ing Nature.

WALKING. 195

I do not know of any poetry to quote which
adequately expresses this yearning for the Wild.
Approached from this side, the best poetry is
tame. I do not know where to find in any lit
erature, ancient or modern, any account which
contents me of that Nature with which even I
am acquainted. You will perceive that I de
mand something which no Augustan nor Eliza
bethan age, which no culture, in short, can give.
Mythology comes nearer to it than anything.
How much more fertile a Nature, at least, has
Grecian mythology its root in than English lit
erature ! Mythology is the crop which the Old
World bore before its soil was exhausted, before
the fancy and imagination were affected with
blight ; and which it still bears, wherever its
pristine vigor is unabated. All other literatures
endure only as the elms which overshadow our
houses ; but this is like the great dragon-tree of
the Western Isles, as old as mankind, and,
whether that does or not, will endure as long;
for the decay of other literatures makes the soil
in which it thrives.

The West is preparing to add its fables to
those of the East. The valleys of the Ganges,
the Nile, and the Rhine, having yielded their,
crop, it remains to be seen what the valleys of
the Amazon, the Plate, the Orinoco, the St. Law
rence, and the Mississippi will produce. Per-

196 WALKING.

chance, when, in the course of ages, American
liberty has become a fiction of the past, — as it
is to some extent a fiction of the present, — the
poets of the world will be inspired by American
mythology.

The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are
not the less true, though they may not recom
mend themselves to the sense which is most
common among Englishmen and Americans to
day. It is not every truth that recommends
itself to the common sense. Nature has a place
for the wild clematis as well as for the cabbage.
Some expressions of truth are reminiscent, —
others merely sensible, as the phrase is, — others
prophetic. Some forms of disease, even, may
prophesy forms of health. The geologist has
discovered that the figures of serpents, griffins,
flying dragons, and other fanciful embellish
ments of heraldry, have their prototypes in the
forms of fossil species which were extinct be
fore man was created, and hence " indicate a
faint and shadowy knowledge of a previous state
of organic existence." The Hindoos dreamed
that the earth rested on an elephant, and the
elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on a ser
pent; and though it may be an unimportant
coincidence, it will not be out of place here to
state, that a fossil tortoise has lately been dis
covered in Asia large enough to support an ele-

WALKING. 197

phant. I confess that I am partial to these wild
fancies, which transcend the order of time and
development. They are the sublimest recrea
tion of the intellect. The partridge loves peas,
but not those that go with her into the pot.

In short, all good things are wild and free.
There is something in a strain of music, whether
produced by an instrument or by the human
voice, — take the sound of a bugle in a summer
night, for instance, — which by its wildness, to
speak without satire, reminds me of the cries
emitted by wild beasts in their native forests.
It is so much of their wildness as I can under
stand. Give me for my friends and neighbors
wild men, not tame ones. The wildness of the
savage is but a faint symbol of the awful ferity
with which good men and lovers meet.

I love even to see the domestic animals re
assert their native rights, — any evidence that
they have not wholly lost their original wild
habits and vigor ; as when my neighbor's cow
breaks out of her pasture early in the spring
and boldly swims the river, a cold, gray tide,
twenty-five or thirty rods wide, swollen by the
melted snow. It is the buffalo crossing the Mis
sissippi. This exploit confers some dignity on
the herd in my eyes, — already dignified. The
seeds of instinct are preserved under the thick
hides of cattle and horses, like seeds in the bow
els of the earth, an indefinite period.

198 WALKING.

Any sportiveness in cattle is unexpected. I
saw one day a herd of a dozen bullocks and
cows running about and frisking in unwieldly
sport, like huge rats, even like kittens. They
shook their heads, raised their tails, and rushed
up and down a hill, and I perceived by their
horns, as well as by their activity, their relation
to the deer tribe. But, alas ! a sudden loud
Whoa ! would have damped their ardor at once,
reduced them from venison to beef, and stiffened
their sides and sinews like the locomotive. Who
but the Evil One has cried, " Whoa ! " to man
kind? Indeed, the life of cattle, like that of
many men, is but a sort of locomotiveness ; they
move a side at a time, and man, by his machin
ery, is meeting the horse and the ox half-way.
Whatever part the whip has touched is thence
forth palsied. Who would ever think of a side
of any of the supple cat tribe, as we speak of a
side of beef?

I rejoice that horses and steers have to be
broken before they can be made the slaves of
men, and that men themselves have some wild
oats still left to sow before they become submis
sive members of society. Undoubtedly, all men
are not equally fit subjects for civilization ; and
because the majority, like dogs and sheep, are
tame by inherited disposition, this is no reason
why the others should have their natures broken

WALKING. 199

that they may be reduced to the same level.
Men are in the main alike, but they were made
several in order that they might be various. If
a low use is to be served, one man will do nearly
or quite as well as another ; if a high one, indi
vidual excellence is to be regarded. Any man
can stop a hole to keep the wind away, but no
other man could serve so rare a use as the au
thor of this illustration did. Confucius says, —
" The skins of the tiger and the leopard, when
they are tanned, are as the skins of the dog and
the sheep tanned." But it is not the part of a
true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to
make sheep ferocious; and tanning their skins
for shoes is not the best use to which they can
be put.

When looking over a list of men's names in
a foreign language, as of military officers, or of
authors who have written on a particular subject,
I am reminded once more that there is nothing
in a name. The name Menschikoff, for instance,
has nothing in it to my ears more human than
a whisker, and it may belong to a rat. As the
names of the Poles and Russians are to us, so
are ours to them. It is as if they had been named
by the child's rigmarole, — lery wiery ichery van^
tittle-lol-tan. I see in my mind a herd of wild
creatures swarming over the earth, and to each

200 WALKING.

the herdsman has affixed some barbarous sound
in his own dialect. The names of men are of
course as cheap and meaningless as JBose and
Tray, the names of dogs.

Methinks it would be some advantage to phi
losophy, if men were named merely in the gross,
as they are known. It would be necessary only
to know the genus and perhaps the race or va
riety, to know the individual. We are not pre
pared to believe that every private soldier in a
Roman army had a name of his own, — because
we have not supposed that he had a character
of his own. At present our only true names are
nicknames. I knew a boy who, from his pecu
liar energy, was called "Buster" by his play
mates, and this rightly supplanted his Christian
name. Some travellers tell us that an Indian
had no name given him at first, but earned it,
and his name was his fame ; and among some
tribes he acquired a new name with every new
exploit. It is pitiful when a man bears a name
for convenience merely, who has earned neither
name nor fame.

I will not allow mere names to make distinc
tions for me, but still see men in herds for all
them. A familiar name cannot make a man
less strange to me. It may be given to a savage
who retains in secret his own wild title earned
in the woods. We have a wild savage in us,

WALKING. 201

and a savage name is perchance somewhere re
corded as ours. I see that my neighbor, who
bears the familiar epithet William, or Edwin,
takes it off with his jacket. It does not adhere
to him when asleep or in anger, or aroused by
any passion or inspiration. I seem to hear pro
nounced by some of his kin at such a time his
original wild name in some jaw-breaking or else
melodious tongue.

Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of
ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty,
and such affection for her children, as the leop
ard ; and yet we are so early weaned from her
breast to society, to that culture which is exclu
sively an interaction of man on man, — a sort
of breeding in and in, which produces at most a
merely English nobility, a civilization destined
to have a speedy limit.

In society, in the best institutions of men, it is
easy to detect a certain precocity. When we
should still be growing children, we are already
little men. Give me a culture which imports
much muck from the meadows, and deepens the
soil, — not that which trusts to heating manures,
and improved implements and modes of culture
only!

Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have
heard of would grow faster, both intellectually

202 WALKING.

and physically, if, instead of sitting up so very
late, he honestly slumbered a fool's allowance.

There may be an excess even of informing
light. Niepce, a Frenchman, discovered " actin
ism," that power in the sun's rays which pro
duces a chemical effect, — that granite rocks, and
stone structures, and statues of metal, " are all
alike destructively acted upon during the hours
of sunshine, and, but for provisions of Nature no
less wonderful, would soon perish under the deli
cate touch of the most subtile of the agencies of
the universe," But he observed that " those
bodies which underwent this change during the
daylight possessed the power of restoring them
selves to their original conditions during the
hours of night, when this excitement was no
longer influencing them." Hence it has been in
ferred that " the hours of darkness are as neces
sary to the inorganic creation as we know night
and sleep are to the organic kingdom." Not
even does the moon shine every night, but gives
place to darkness.

I would not have every man nor every part of
a man cultivated, any more than I would have
* every acre of earth cultivated : part will be till
age, but the greater part will be meadow and
forest, not only serving an immediate use, but
preparing a mould against a distant future, by the
annual decay of the vegetation which it supports.

WALKING. 203

There are other letters for the child to learn
than those which Cadmus invented. The Span
iards have a good term to express this wild and
dusky knowledge, — Gramdtica parda, tawny
grammar, — a kind of mother-wit derived from
that same leopard to which I have referred.

We have heard of a Society- for the Diffusion
of Useful Knowledge. It is said that knowledge
is power ; and the like. Methinks there is equal
need of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ig
norance, what we will call Beautiful Knowledge^
a knowledge useful in a higher sense : for what
is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but
a conceit that we know something, which robs
us of the advantage of our actual ignorance?
What we call knowledge is often our positive
ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge.-
By long years of patient industry and reading of
the newspapers, — for what are the libraries of
science but files of newspapers? — a man accu
mulates a myriad facts, lays them up in his
memory, and then when in some spring of his
life he saunters abroad into the Great Fields of
thought, he, as it were, goes to grass like a horse,
and leaves all his harness behind in the stable.
I would say to the Society for the Diffusion of
Useful Knowledge, sometimes, — Go to grass.
You have eaten hay long enough. The spring
has come with its green crop. The very cows

204 WALKING.

are driven to their country pastures before the
end of May ; though I have heard of one un
natural farmer who kept his cow in the barn and
fed her on hay all the year round. So, fre
quently, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge treats its cattle.

A man's ignorance sometimes is not only
useful, but beautiful, — while his knowledge, so
•called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides
being ugly. Which is the best man to deal
with, — he who knows nothing about a subject,
and, what is extremely rare, knows that he
knows nothing, or he who really knows some
thing about it, but thinks that he knows all ?

My desire for knowledge is intermittent ; but
my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres un
known to my feet is perennial and constant.
The highest that we can attain to is not Knowl
edge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do
not know that this higher knowledge amounts
to anything more definite than a novel and
grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the in
sufficiency of all that we called Knowledge be
fore, — a discovery that there are more things in
heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
philosophy. It is the lightmg up of the mist by
the sun. Man cannot know in any higher sense
than this, any more than he can look serenely
and with impunity in the face of sun : 'Os rl

WALKING.

ov Ktivov vorjo-eis, — " You will not perceive that,
as perceiving a particular thing," say the Chal
dean Oracles.

There is something servile in the habit of
seeking after a law which we may obey. We
may study the laws of matter at and for our
convenience, but a successful life knows no law.
It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of
a law which binds us where we did not know
before that we were bound. Live free, dhild of
the mist, — and with respect to knowledge we
are all children of the mist. The man who takes
the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by
virtue of his relation to the law-maker. " That
is active duty," says the Vishnu Purana, "which
is not for our bondage ; that is knowledge which
is for our liberation : all other duty is good only
unto weariness ; all other knowledge is only the
cleverness of an artist."

It is remarkable how few events or crises
there are in our histories ; how little exercised
we have been in our minds ; how few experi
ences we have had. I would fain be assured
that I am growing, apace and rankly, though
my very growth disturb this dull equanimity, —
though it be with struggle through long, dark,
muggy nights or seasons of gloom. It would
be well, if all our lives were a divine tragedy

206 WALKING.

even, instead of this trivial comedy or farce.
Dante, Bunyan, and others, appear to have been
exercisegl in their minds more than we : they
were subjected to a kind of culture such as our
district schools and colleges do not contemplate.
Even Mahomet, though many may scream at
his name, had a good deal more to live for, ay,
and to die for, than they have commonly.

When, at rare intervals, some thought vibits
one, as perchance he is walking on a railroad,
then indeed the cars go by without his hearing
them. But soon, by some inexorable law, our
life goes by and the cars return.

" Gentle breeze, that wanderest unseen,
And bendest the thistles round Loira of storms,
Traveller of the windy glens,
Why hast thou left my ear so soon ? "

While almost all men feel an attraction draw
ing them to society, few are attracted strongly
to Nature. In their relation to Nature men ap
pear to me for the most part, notwithstanding
their arts, lower than the animals. It is not
often a beautiful relation, as in the case of the
animals. How little appredMfcfl of the beauty
of the landscape there is among us ! We have
to be told that the Greeks called the world
Kooyzos, Beauty, or Order, but we do not see
clearly why they did so, and we e_stea«r it at
best only a curious philological fact.

WALKING. 207

For my part, I feel that with regard to Nature
I live a sort of border life, on the confines of a
world into which I make occasional and tran-
sional and transient forays only, and my patriot
ism and allegiance to the State into whose ter
ritories I seem to retreat are those of a moss
trooper. Unto a life which I call natural I
would gladly follow even a will - o' - the - wisp
through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no
moon nor fire-fly has shown me the causeway to
it. Nature is a personality so vast and univer
sal that we have never seen one of her features.
The walker in the familiar fields which stretch
around my native town sometimes finds him
self in another land than is described in their
owners' deeds, as it were in some far-away field
on the confines of the actual Concord, where her
jurisdiction ceases, and the idea which the word
Concord suggests ceases to be suggested. These
farms which I have myself surveyed, these
bounds which I have set up, appear dimly still as
through a mist; but they have no chemistry to
fix them ; they fade from the surface of the glass ;
and the picture which the painter painted stands
out dimly from beneath. The world with which
we are commonly acquainted leaves no trace,
and it will have no anniversary.

I took a walk on Spaulding's Farm the other
afternoon. I saw the setting sun lighting up

208 WALKING.

the opposite side of a stately pine wood. Its
golden rays straggled into the aisles of the wood
as into some noble hall. I was impressed as if
some ancient and altogether admirable and shin
ing family had settled there in that part of the
land called Concord, unknown to rne, — to
whom the sun was servant, — who had not
gone into society in the village, — who had not
been called on. I saw their park, their pleasure-
ground, beyond through the wood, in Spauld-
ing's cranberry-meadow. The pines furnished
them with gables as they grew. . Their house
was not obvious to vision ; the trees grew
through it. I do not know whether I heard the
sounds of a suppressed hilarity or not. They
seemed to recline on the sunbeams. They have
sons and daughters. They are quite well. The
farmer's cart-path, which leads directly through
their hall, does not in the least put them out, —
as the muddy bottom of a pool is sometimes
seen through the reflected skies. They never
heard of Spaulding, and do not know that he is
their neighbor, — notwithstanding I heard him
whistle as he drove his team through the house.
Nothing can equal the serenity of their lives.
Their coat of arms is simply a lichen. I saw
it painted on the pines and oaks. Their attics
were in the tops of the trees. They are of no
politics. There was no noise of labor. I did

WALKING. 209

not perceive that they were weaving or spin
ning. Yet I did detect, when the wind lulled
and hearing was done away, the finest imagin
able sweet musical hum, — as of a distant hive
in May, which perchance was the sound of their
thinking. They had no idle thoughts, and no
one without could see their work, for their in
dustry was not as in knots and excrescences
embayed.

But I find it difficult to remember them. They
fade irrevocably out of my mind even now while
I speak and endeavor to recall them, and recol
lect myself. It is only after a long and serious
effort to recollect my best thoughts that I be
come again aware of their cohabitancy. If it
were not for such families as this, I think I
should move out of Concord.

We are accustomed to say in New England
that few and fewer pigeons visit us every year.
Our forests furnish no rnast for them. So, it
would seem, few and fewer thoughts visit each
growing man from year to year, for the grove in
our minds is laid waste, — sold to feed unneces
sary fires of ambition, or sent to mill, and there
is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on.
They no longer build nor breed with us. In
some more genial season, perchance, a faint
shadow flits across the landscape of the mind,

14

210 WALKING.

cast by the wing's of some thought in its vernal
or autumnal migration, but, looking up, we are
unable to detect the substance of the thought
itself. Our winged thoughts are turned to poul
try. They no longer soar, and they attain only
to a Shanghai and Cochin-China grandeur.
Those gra-a-ate thoughts, those gra-a-ate men
you hear of!

We hug the earth, — how rarely we mount!
Methinks we might elevate ourselves a little
more. We might climb a tree, at least. I
found my account in climbing a tree once. It
was a tall white pine, on the top of a hill ; and
though I got well pitched, I was well paid for
it, for I discovered new mountains in the hori
zon which I had never seen before, — so much
more of the earth and the heavens. I might
have walked about the foot of the tree for three
score years and ten, and yet I certainly should
never have seen them. But, above all, I dis
covered around me, — it was near the end of
June, — on the ends of the topmost branches
only, a few minute and delicate red cone-like
blossoms, the fertile flower of the white pine
looking heavenward. I carried straightway to
the village the topmost spire, and showed it to
stranger jurymen who walked the streets, — for
it was court-week, — and to farmers and lum-

WALKING. 211

ber-dealers and wood-choppers and hunters, and
not one had ever seen the like before, but they
\vondered as at a star dropped down. Tell of
ancient architects finishing their works on the
tops of columns as perfectly as on the lower
and more visible parts! Nature has from the
first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest
only toward the heavens, above men's heads and
unobserved by them. We see only the flowers
that are under our feet in the meadows. The
pines have developed their delicate blossoms on
the highest twigs oL^the wood every summer
for ages, as well over the heads of Nature's red
children as of her white ^ones ; yet scarcely a
farmer or hunter in the land has ever seen them.

Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the
present. He is blessed over ah1 mortals who
loses no moment of the passing life in remem
bering the past. Unless our philosophy hears
the cock crow in every barn-yard within our
horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly
reminds us that we are growing rusty and an
tique in our employments and habits of thought.
His philosophy comes down to a more recent
time than ours. There is something suggested
by it that is a newer testament, — the gospel
according to this moment. He has not fallen
astern ; he has got up early, and kept up early,

212 WALKING.

and to be where he is to be in season, in the
foremost rank of time. It is an expression of
the health and soundness of Nature, a brag for
all the world, — healthiness as of a spring burst
forth, a new fountain of the Muses, to celebrate
this last instant of time. Where he lives no
fugitive slave laws are passed. Who has not
betrayed his master many times since last he
heard that note?

The merit of this bird's strain is in its free
dom from all plaintiveness. The singer can
easily move us to tears or to laughter, but
where is he who can excite in us a pure morn
ing joy ? When, in doleful dumps, breaking the
awful stillness of our wooden sidewalk on a
Sunday, or, perchance, a watcher in the house
of mourning, I hear a cockerel crow far or near,
I think to myself, " There is one of us well, at
any rate," — and with a sudden gush return to
my senses.

We had a remarkable sunset one day last
November. I was walking in a meadow, the
source of a small brook, when the sun at last,
just before setting, after a cold gray day, reached
a clear stratum in the horizon, and the softest,
brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass
and on the stems of the trees in the opposite
horizon, and on the leaves of the shrub-oaks on

WALKING. 213

the hill-side, while our shadows stretched long
over the meadow eastward, as if we were the
only motes in its beams:? It was such a light
as we could not have imagined a moment be
fore, and the air also was so warm and serene
that nothing was wanting to make a paradise
of that meadow. When we reflected that this
was not a solitary phenomenon, never to hap
pen again, but that it would happen -forever and
ever an infinite number of evenings, and cheer
and reassure the latest child that walked there,
it was more glorious still.

The sun sets on some retired meadow, where
no house is*visible, with all the glory and splen
dor that it lavishes on cities, and perchance, as
it has never set before, — where there is but a
solitary marsh-hawk to have his wings gilded
by it, or only a musquash looks out from his
cabin, and there is some little black-veined
brook in the midst of the marsh, just begin
ning to meander, winding slowly round a de
caying stump. We walked in so pure and
bright a light, gilding the withered grass and
leaves, so softly and serenely bright, I thought
I had never bathed in such a golden flood, with
out a ripple or a murmur to it. The west side
of every wood and rising ground gleamed like
the boundary of Elysium, and the sun on our
backs seemed like a gentle herdsman driving us
home at evening.

214 WALKING.

So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till
one day the sun shall shine more brightly than
ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our
minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives
with a great awakening light, as warm and se
rene and golden as on a bank-side in autumn.

AUTUMNAL TINTS.

[1862.]

EUROPEANS coming to America are surprised
by the brilliancy of our autumnal foliage.
There is no account of such a phenomenon
in English poetry, because the trees acquire
but few bright colors there. The most that
Thomson says on this subject in his " Au
tumn" is contained in the lines, —

" But see the fading many-colored woods,
Shade deepening over shade, the country round
Imbrown ; a crowded umbrage, dusk and dun,
Of every hue, from wan declining green to sooty dark": —

and in the line in which he speaks of

" Autumn beaming o'er the yellow woods."

The autumnal change of our woods has not
made a deep impression on our own literature
yet. October has hardly tinged our poetry.

A great many, who have spent their lives in
cities, and have never chanced to come into the
country at this season, have never seen this, the
flower, or rather the ripe fruit, of the year. I

216 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

remember riding with one such citizen, who,
though a fortnight too late for the most bril
liant tints, was taken by surprise, and would
not believe that there had been any brighter.
He had never heard of this phenomenon before.
Not only many in our towns have never wit
nessed it, but it is scarcely remembered by the
majority from year to year.

Most appear to confound changed leaves with
withered ones, as if they were to confound ripe
apples with rotten ones. I think that the change
to some higher color in a leaf is an evidence that
it has arrived at a late and perfect maturity, an
swering to the maturity of fruits. It is generally
the lowest and oldest leaves which change first.
But as the perfect winged and^usually bright- col
ored insect is short-lived, so the leaves ripen but
to fall.

Generally, every fruit, on ripening, and just
before it falls, when it commences a more inde
pendent and individual existence, requiring less
nourishment from any source, and that not so
much from the earth through its stem as from
the sun and air, acquires a bright tint. So do
leaves. The physiologist says it is " due to an
increased absorption of oxygen." That is the
scientific account of the matter, — only a reas-
sertion of the fact. But I am more interested
in the rosy cheek than I am to know what par-

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 217

ticular diet the maiden fed on. The very forest
and herbage, the pellicle of the earth, must ac
quire a bright color, an evidence of its ripeness,
— as if the globe itself were a fruit on its stem,
with ever a cheek toward the sun.

Flowers are but colored leaves, fruits but ripe
ones. The edible part of most fruits is, as the
physiologist says, "the parenchyma or fleshy
tissue of the leaf," of which they are formed.

Our appetites have commonly confined our
views of ripeness and its phenomena, color,
mellowness, and perfectness, to the fruits which
we eat, and we are wont to forget that an im
mense harvest which we do not eat, hardly use
at all, is annually ripened by Nature. At our
annual Cattle Shows and Horticultural Exhibi
tions, we make, as we think, a great show of
fair fruits, destined, however, to a rather ignoble
end, fruits riot valued for their beauty chiefly.
But round about and within our towns there is
annually another show of fruits, on an infinitely
grander scale, fruits which address our taste for
beauty alone.

October is the month for painted leaves.
Their rich glow now flashes round the world.
As fruits and leaves and the day itself acquire
a bright tint just before they fall, so the year
near its setting. October is its sunset sky ; No
vember the later twilight.

218 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

I formerly thought that it would be worth the
while to get a specimen leaf from each chang
ing tree, shrub, and herbaceous plant, when it
had acquired its brightest characteristic color, in
its transition from the green to the brown state,
outline it, and copy its color exactly, with paint
in a book, which should be entitled, " October,
or Autumnal Tints " ; — beginning with the ear
liest reddening, — Woodbine and the lake of
radical leaves, and coming down through the
Maples, Hickories, and Sumachs, and many
beautifully freckled leaves less generally known,
to the latest Oaks and Aspens. What a me
mento such a book would be ! You would
need only to turn over its leaves to take a
ramble through the autumn woods whenever
you pleased. Or if I could preserve the leaves
themselves, unfaded, it would be better still.
I have made but little progress toward such
a book, but I have endeavored, instead, to
describe all these bright tints in the order in
which they present themselves. The following
are some extracts from my notes.

THE PURPLE GRASSES.

BY the twentieth of August, everywhere in
woods and swamps, we are reminded of the
fall, both by the richly spotted Sarsaparilla-

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 219

leaves and Brakes, and the withering and black
ened Skunk-Cabbage and Hellebore, and, by
the river-side, the already blackening Pontede-
ria.

The Purple Grass (Eragrostis pectindcea) is
now in the height of its beauty. I remember
still when I first noticed this grass particularly.
Standing on a hillside near our river, I saw,
thirty or forty rods off, a stripe of purple half
a dozen rods long, under the edge of a wood,
where the ground sloped toward a meadow. It
was as high-colored and interesting, though not
quite so bright^ as the patches of Rhexia, being
a darker purple, like a berry's stain laid on close
and thick. On going to and examining it, I
found it to be a kind of grass in bloom, hardly
a foot high, with but few green blades, and a
fine spreading panicle of purple flowers, a shal
low, purplish mist trembling around me. Close
at hand it appeared but a dull purple, and made
little impression on the eye ; it was even diffi
cult to detect ; and if you plucked a single plant,
you were surprised to find how thin it was, and
how little color it had. But viewed at a dis
tance in a favorable light, it was of a fine lively
purple, flower-like, enriching the earth. Such
puny causes combine to produce these decided
effects. I was the more surprised and charmed
because grass is commonly of a sober and hum
ble color.

220 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

With its beautiful purple blush it reminds me,
and supplies the place, of the Rhoxia, which is
now leaving off, and it is one of the most in
teresting phenomena of August. The finest
patches of it grow on waste strips or selvages
of land at the base of dry hills, just above the
edge of the meadows, where the greedy mower
does not deign to swing his scythe ; for this is
a thin and poor grass, beneath his notice. Or,
it may be, because it is so beautiful he does not
know that it exists ; for the same eye does not
see this and Timothy. He carefully gets the
meadow hay and the more nutritious grasses
which grow next to that, but he leaves this fine
purple mist for the walker's harvest, — fodder
for his fancy stock. Higher up the hill, per
chance, grow also Blackberries, John's- Wort,
and neglected, withered, and wiry June-Grass.
How fortunate that it grows in such places,
and not in the midst of the rank grasses which
are annually cut! Nature thus keeps use and
beauty distinct. I know many such localities,
where it does not fail to present itself annually,
and paint the earth with its blush. It grows on
the gentle slopes, either in a continuous patch
or in scattered and rounded tufts a foot in
diameter, and it lasts till it is killed by the
first smart frosts. 9

In most plants the corolla or calyx is the part

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 221

which attains the highest color, and is the most
attractive ; in many it is the seed-vessel or fruit;
in others, as the Red Maple, the leaves ; and in
others still it is the very culm itself which is the
principal flower or blooming part.

The last is especially the case with the
Poke or Garget (Phytolacca decdndra). Some
which stand under our cliffs quite dazzle me
with their purple stems now and early in
September. They are as interesting to me as
most flowers, and one of the most important
fruits of our autumn. Every part is flower, (or
fruit,) such is its superfluity of color, — stem,
branch, peduncle, pedicel, petiole, and even the
at length yellowish purple-veined leaves. Its
cylindrical racemes of berries of various hues,
from green to dark purple, six or sever) inches
long, are gracefully drooping on all sides, offer
ing repasts to the birds ; and even the sepals
from which the birds have picked the berries are
a brilliant lake-red, with crimson flame-like re
flections, equal to anything of the kind, — all on
fire with ripeness. Hence the lacca, from lac,
lake. There are at the same time flower-buds,
flowers, green berries, dark purple or ripe ones,
and these flower-like sepals, all on the same
plant.

We love to see any redness in the vegetation
of the temperate zone. It is the color of colors.

222 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

This plant speaks to our blood. It asks a bright
sun on it to make it show to best advantage,
and it must be seen at this season of the year.
On warm hillsides its stems are ripe by the
twenty-third of August. At that date I walked
through a beautiful grove of them, six or seven
feet high, on the side of one of our cliffs, where
they ripen early. Quite to the ground they
were a deep brilliant purple with a bloom, con
trasting with the still clear green leaves. It ap
pears a rare triumph of Nature to have pro
duced and perfected such a plant, as if this
were enough for a summer. What a perfect
maturity it arrives at! It is the emblem of a
successful life concluded by a death not prema
ture, which is an ornament to Nature. What
if we were to mature as perfectly, root and
branch, glowing in the midst of our decay, like
the Poke ! I confess that it excites me to be
hold them. I cut one for a cane, for I would
fain handle and lean on it. I love to press the
berries between my fingers, and see their juice
staining my hand. To walk amid these up
right, branching casks of purple wine, which
retain and diffuse a sunset glow, tasting each
one "with your eye, instead of counting the
pipes on a London dock, what a privilege!
For Nature's vintage is not confined to the
vine. Our poets have sung of wine, the pro-

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 223

duct of a foreign plant which commonly they
never saw, as if our own plants had no juice
in them more than the singers. Indeed, this
has been called by some the American Grape,
and, though a native of America, its juices are
used in some foreign countries to improve the
color of the wine ; so that the poetaster may
be celebrating the virtues of the Poke without
knowing it. Here are berries enough to paint
afresh the western sky, and play the bacchanal
with, if you will. And what flutes its ensan
guined stems would make, to be used in such
a dance ! It is truly a royal plant. I could
spend the evening of the year musing amid the
Poke-stems. And perchance amid these groves
might arise at last a new school of philosophy
or poetry. It lasts all through September.

At the same time with this, or near the end
of August, a to me very interesting genus of
grasses, Andropogons, or Beard-Grasses, is in
its prime. Andropogon furcatus, Forked Beard-
Grass, or call it Purple-Fingered Grass ; Andro-
pogon scoparius, Purple Wood- Grass ; and An-
dropogon (now called Sorghum) nutans^ Indian-
Grass. The first is a very tall and slender-
calmed grass, three to seven feet high, with
four or five purple finger-like spikes raying up
ward from the top. The second is also quite
slender, growing in tufts two feet high by

224 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

one wide, with culms often somewhat curving,
which, as the spikes go out of bloom, have
a whitish fuzzy look. These two are prevail
ing grasses at this season on dry and sandy
fields and hillsides. The culms of both, not
to mention their pretty flowers, reflect a pur
ple tinge, and help to declare the ripeness of
the year. Perhaps I have the more sympathy
with them because they are despised by the
farmer, and occupy sterile and neglected soil.
They are high-colored, like ripe grapes, and
express a maturity which the spring did not
suggest. Only the August sun could have
thus burnished these culms and leaves. The
farmer has long since done his upland haying,
and he will not condescend to bring his scythe
to where these slender wild grasses have at
length flowered thinly ; you often see spaces
of bare sand amid them. But I walk encour
aged between the tufts of furple Wood- Grass,
over the sandy fields, and along the edge of
the Shrub-Oaks, glad to recognize these sim
ple contemporaries. With thoughts cutting a
broad swathe I " get " them, with horse-rak
ing thoughts I gather them into windrows. The
fine-eared poet may hear the whetting of my
scythe. These two were almost the first grasses
that I learned to distinguish, for I had not
known by how many friends I was surrounded,

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 225

— I had seen them simply as grasses standing.
The purple of their culms also excites me like
that of the Poke- Weed stems.

Think what refuge there is for one, before
August is over, from college commencements
and society that isolates! I can skulk amid
the tufts of Purple Wood- Grass on the bor
ders of the " Great Fields." Wherever I walk
these afternoons, the Purple - Fingered Grass
also stands like a guide-board, and points my
thoughts to more poetic paths than they have
lately travelled.

A man shall perhaps rush by and trample
down plants as high as his head, and cannot
be said to know that they exist, though he
may have cut many tons of them, littered his
stables with them, and fed them to his cattle
for years. Yet, if he ever favorably attends
to them, he may be overcome by their beauty.
Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it,
stands there to express some thought or mood
of ours ; and yet how long it stands in vain !
I had walked over those Great Fields so many
"Augusts, and never yet distinctly recognized
these purple companions that I had there. I
had brushed against them and trodden on them,
forsooth ; and now, at last, they, as it were, rose
up and blessed me. Beauty and true wealth
are always thus cheap and despised. Heaven

15

226 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

might be defined as the place which men
avoid. Who can doubt that these grasses,
which the farmer says are. of no account to
him, find some compensation in your appreci
ation of them ? I may say that I never saw
them before, — though, when I came to look
them face to face, there did come down to me
a purple gleam from previous years ; and now,
wherever I go, I see hardly anything else. It is
the reign and presidency of the Andropogons.

Almost the very sands confess the ripening
influence of the August sun, and methinks, to
gether with the slender grasses waving over
them, reflect a purple tinge. The impurpled
sands ! Such is the consequence of all this sun
shine absorbed into the pores of plants and of
the earth. All sap or blood is now wine-col
ored. At last we have not only the purple sea,
but the purple land.

The Chestnut Beard-Grass, Indian-Grass, or
Wood-Grass, growing here and there in waste
places, but more rare than the former, (from two
to four or five feet high,) is still handsomer and
of more vivid colors than its congeners, and
might well have caught the Indian's eye. It
has a long, narrow, one-sided, and slightly nod
ding panicle of bright purple and yellow flow
ers, like a banner raised above its reedy leaves.
These bright standards are now advanced on

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 227

the distant hill-sides, not in large armies, but
in scattered troops or single file, like the red
men. They stand thus fair and bright, repre
sentative of the race which they are named af
ter, but for the most part unobserved as they.
The expression of this grass haunted me for a
week, after I first passed and noticed it, like
the glance of an eye. It stands like an Indian
chief taking a last look at his favorite hunting-
ground*.

THE RED MAPLE.

BY the twenty -fifth of September, the Red Ma
ples generally are beginning to be ripe. Some
large ones have been conspicuously changing
for a weekr and some single trees are now very
brilliant. I notice a small one, half a mile off
across a meadow, against the green wood-side
there, a far brighter red than the blossoms of
any tree in summer, and more conspicuous, I
have observed this tree for several autumns in
variably changing earlier than its fellows, just
as one tree ripens its fruit earlier than another.
It might serve to mark the season, perhaps. I
should be sorry, if it were cut down. I know
of two or three such trees in different parts of
our town, which might, perhaps, be propagated
from, as early ripeners or September trees, and
their seed be advertised in the market, as well

228 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

as that of radishes, if we cared as much about
them.

At present these burning bushes stand chiefly
along the edge of the meadows, or 1 distinguish
them afar on the hillsides here and there. Some
times you will see many small ones in a swamp
turned quite crimson when all other trees around
are still perfectly green, and the former appear
so much the brighter for it. They take you by
surprise, as you are going by on one side} across
the fields, thus early in the season, as if it were
some gay encampment of the red men, or other
foresters, of whose arrival you had not heard.

Some single trees, wholly bright scarlet, seen
against others of their kind still freshly green,
or against evergreens, are more memorable than
whole groves will be by-and-by. How beauti
ful, when a whole tree is like one great scarlet
fruit full of ripe juices, every leaf, from lowest
limb to topmost spire, all aglow, especially if
you look toward the sun ! What more remark
able object can there be in the landscape ? Vis
ible /or miles, too fair to be believed. If such
a phenomenon occurred but once, it would be
handed down by tradition to posterity, and get
into the mythology at last.

The whole tree thus ripening in advance of
its fellows attains a singular preeminence, and
sometimes maintains it for a week or two. I

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 229

am thrilled at the sight of it, bearing aloft its
scarlet standard for the regiment of green-clad
.foresters around, and I go half a rnile out of my
way to examine it. A single tree becomes thus
the crowning beauty of some meadowy vale,
and the expression of the whole surrounding
forest is at once more spirited for it.

A small Red Maple has grown, perchance,
far away at the head of some retired valley, a
mile f#om any road, unobserved. It has faith
fully discharged the duties of a Maple there, all
winter and summer, neglected none of its econ
omies, but added to its stature in the virtue
which belongs to a Maple, by a steady growth
for so many months, never having gone gadding
abroad, and is nearer heaven than it was in the
spring. It has faithfully husbanded its sap, and
afforded ' a shelter to the wandering bird, has
long since ripened its seeds and committed them
to the winds, and has the satisfaction of know
ing, perhaps, that a thousand little well-behaved
Maples are already settled in life somewhere.
It deserves well of Mapledom. Its leaves -have
been asking it from time to time, in a whisper,
" When shall we redden ? " And now, in this
month of September, this month of travellingj
when men are hastening to the sea-side, or the
mountains, or the lakes, this modest Maple, still
without budging an inch, travels in its reputa-

230 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

tion, — runs up its scarlet flag on that hillside,
which shows that it has finished its summer's
work before all other trees, and withdraws from
the contest. At the eleventh hour of the year,
the tree which no scrutiny could have detected
here when it was most industrious is thus, by
the tint of its maturity, by its very blushes, re
vealed at last to the careless and distant travel
ler, and leads his thoughts away from the dusty
road into those brave solitudes which it inhab
its. It flashes out conspicuous with all the vir
tue and beauty of a Maple, — Acer rubrum.
We may now read its title, or rubric, clear. Its
virtues, not its sins, are as scarlet.

Notwithstanding the Red Maple is the most
intense scarlet of any of our trees, the Sugar-
Maple has been the most celebrated, and Mi-
chaux in his " Sylva " does not speak of the
autumnal color of the former. About the sec
ond of October, these trees, both large and
small, are most brilliant, though many are still
green. In ^sprouVlands" they seem to vie with
one another, and ever some particular one in
the midst of the crowd will be of a peculiarly
pure scarlet, and by its more intense color at
tract our eye even at a distance, and carry off
the palm. A large Red-Maple swamp, when
at the height of its change, is the most obvi
ously brilliant of all tangible things, where I

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 231

dwell, so abundant is this tree with us. It
varies much both in form and color. A great
many are merely yellow, more scarlet, others
scarlet deepening into crimson, more red than
common. Look at yonder swamp of Maples
mixed with Pines, at the base of a Pine-clad
hill, a quarter of a mile off, so that you get the
foil effect of the bright colors, without detecting
the imperfections of the leaves, and see their
yellow, scarlet, and crimson fires, of all tints,
mingled and contrasted with the green. Some
Maples are yet green, only yellow or crimson-
tipped on the edges of their flakes, like the edges
of a Hazel- Nut burr ; some are wholly brilliant
scarlet, raying out regularly and finely every
way, bilaterally, like the veins of a leaf; others,
of more irregular form, when I turn my head
slightly, emptying out some of its earthiness
and concealing the trunk of the tree, seem to
rest heavily flake on flake, like yellow and scar
let clouds, wreath upon wreath, or like snow
drifts driving through the air, straf'fied by the
wind. It adds greatly to the beauty of such a
swamp at this season, that, even though there
may be no other trees interspersed, it is not seen
as a simple mass of color, but, different trees
being of different colors and hues, the outline
of each crescent tree-top is distinct, and where
one laps on to another. Yet a painter would

232 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

hardly venture to make them thus distinct a
quarter of a mile off.

As I go across a meadow directly toward a
low rising ground this bright afternoon, I see,
some fifty rods off toward the sun, the top of a
Maple swamp just appearing over the sheeny
russet edge of the hill, a stripe apparently twen
ty rods long by ten feet deep, of the most in
tensely brilliant scarlet, orange, and yellow,
equal to any flowers or fruits, or any tints ever
painted. As I advance, lowering the edge of
the hill which makes the firm foreground or
lower frame of the picture, the depth of the
brilliant grove revealed steadily increases, sug
gesting that the whole of the inclosed valley is
filled with such color. One wonders that the
tithing-men and fathers of the town are not out
to see what the trees mean by their high colors
and exuberance of spirits, fearing that some
mischief is brewing. I do not see what the
Puritans did at this season, when the Maples
blaze out in scarlet. They certainly could not
have worshipped in groves then. Perhaps that
is what they built meeting-houses and fenced
them round with horse-sheds for.

THE ELM.

Now, too, the first of October, or later, the
Elms are at the height of their autumnal beauty,

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 233

great brownish-yellow masses, warm from their
September oven, hanging over the highway.
Their leaves are perfectly ripe. I wonder if
there is any answering ripeness in the lives of
the men who live beneath them. As I look
down our street, which is lined with them, they
remind me both by their form and color of yel
lowing sheaves of grain, as if the harvest had
indeed come to the village itself, and we might
expect to find some maturity and flavor in the
thoughts of the villagers at last, Under those
bright rustling yellow piles just ready to fall on
the heads of the walkers, how can any crudity
or greenness of thought or act prevail? When
I stand where half a dozen large Elms droop
over a house, it is as if I stood within a ripe
pumpkin-rind, and I feel as mellow as if I were
the pulp, though I may be somewhat stringy
and seedy withal. What is the late greenness
of the English Elm, like a cucumber out of
season, which does not know when to have
done, compared witb the early and golden ma
turity of the American tree ? The street is the
scene of a great harvest-home. It would be
worth the while to set out these trees, if only
for their autumnal value. Think of these great
yellow canopies or parasols held over our heads
and houses by the mile together, making the vil
lage all one and compact, — an uhnarium^ which

234 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

is at the same time a nursery of men! And
then how gently and unobserved they drop their
burden and let in the sun when it is wanted,
their leaves not heard when they fall on our
roofs and in our streets ; and thus the village
parasol is shut up and put away! I see the
market-man driving into the village, and'disap-
pearing under its canopy of Elm-tops, with his
crop, as into a great granary or barn-yard. I
am tempted to go thither as to a husking of
thoughts, now dry and ripe, and ready to be
separated from their integuments ; but, alas ! I
foresee that it will be chiefly husks and little
thought, blasted pig-corn, fit only for cob-meal,
— for, as you sow, so shall you reap.

FALLEN LEAVES.

BY the sixth of October the leaves generally
begin to fall, in successive showers, after frost
or rain ; but the principal leaf-harvest, the acme
of the Fall, is commonly about the sixteenth.
Some morning at that date there is perhaps a
harder frost than we have seen, and ice formed
under the pump, and now, when the morning
wind rises, the leaves come down in denser
showers than ever. They suddenly form thick
beds or carpets on the ground, in this gentle air,
or even without wind, just the size and form of
the tree above. Some trees, as small Hickories,

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 235

appear to have dropped their leaves instantane
ously, as a soldier grounds arms at a signal ; and
those of the Hickory, being bright yellow still,
though withered, reflect a blaze of light from the
ground where they lie. Down they have come
on all sides, at the first earnest touch of au
tumn's wand, making a sound like rain.

Or else it is after moist and rainy weather
that we notice how great a fall of leaves there
has been in the night, though it may not yet be
the touch that loosens the Rock-Maple leaf.
The streets are thickly strewn with the trophies,
and fallen Elm-leaves make a dark brown pave
ment under our feet. After some remarkably
warm Indian-summer day or days, I perceive
that it is the unusual heat which, more than
anything, causes the leaves to fall, there having
been, perhaps, no frost nor rain for some time.
The intense heat suddenly ripens and wilts them,
just as it softens and ripens peaches and other
fruits, and causes them to drop.

The leaves of late Red Maples, still bright,
strew the earth, often crimson-spotted on a yel
low ground, like some wild apples, — though
they preserve these bright colors on the ground
but a day or two, especially if it rains. On
causeways I go by trees here and there all bare
and smoke-like, having lost their brilliant cloth
ing ; but there it lies, nearly as bright as ever,

236 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

on the ground on one side, and making nearly
as regular a figure as lately on the tree. I would
rather say that I first observe the trees thus flat
on the ground like a permanent colored shadow,
and they suggest to look for the boughs that
bore them. A queen might be proud to walk
where these gallant trees have spread their
bright cloaks in the mud. I see wagons roll
over them as a shadow or a reflection, and the
drivers heed them just as little as they did their
shadows before. - •

Birds'-nests, in the Huckleberry and other
shrubs, and in trees, are already being filled with
the withered leaves. So many have fallen in
the woods, that a squirrel cannot run after a
falling nut without being heard. Boys are rak
ing them in the streets, if only for the pleasure
of dealing with such clean crisp substances.
Some sweep the paths scrupulously neat, .and
then stand to see the next breath strew them
with new trophies. The swamp-floor is thickly
covered, and the Lycopodium lucidulum looks
suddenly greener amid them. In dense woods
they half-cover pools that are three or four rods
long. The other day I could hardly find a well-
known spring, and even suspected that it had
dried up, for it was completely concealed by
freshly fallen leaves;. and when I swept them
aside and revealed it, it was like striking the

AUTUMNAL "TINTS. 237

earth, with Aaron's rod, for a new spring. Wet
grounds about the edges of swamps look dry
with them. At one swamp, where I was sur
veying, thinking to step on a leafy shore from a
rail, I got into the water more than a foot deep.
When I go to the river the day after the prin
cipal fall of leaves, the sixteenth, I find my boat
all covered, bottom and seats, with the leaves of
the Golden Willow under which it is moored,
and I set sail with a cargo of them rustling
under my feet. If I empty it, it will be full
again to-morrow. I do not regard them as lit
ter, to be swept out, but accept them as suit
able straw or matting for the bottom of my car
riage. When I turn up into the mouth of the
Assabet, which is wooded, large fleets of leaves
are floating on its surface, as it were getting out
to sea, with room to tack ; but next the shore, a
little farther up, they are thicker than foam, quite
concealing the water for a rod in width, under
and amid the Alders, Button-Bushes, and Ma
ples, still perfectly light and dry, with fibre un-
relaxed ; and at a rocky bend where they are
met and stopped by the morning wind, they
sometimes form a broad and dense crescent quite
across the river. When I turn my prow that
way, and the wave which it makes strikes them,
list what a pleasant rustling from these dry sub
stances grating on one another! Often it is

238 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

their undulation only which reveals the water
beneath them. Also every motion of the wood-
turtle on the shore is betrayed by their rustling
there. Or even in mid-channel, when the wind
rises, I hear them blown with a rustling sound.
Higher up they are slowly moving round and
round in some great eddy which the river makes,
as that at the " Leaning Hemlocks," where the
water is deep, and the current is wearing into
the bank.

Perchance, in the afternoon of such a day,
when the water is perfectly calm and full of re
flections, I paddle gently down the main stream,
and, turning up the Assabet, reach a quiet cove,
where I unexpectedly find myself surrounded by
myriads of leaves, like fellow-voyagers, which
seem to have the same purpose, or want of pur
pose, with myself. See this great fleet of scat
tered leaf-boats which we paddle amid, in this
smooth river-bay, each one curled up on every
side by the sun's skill, each nerve a stiff spruce-
knee, — like boats of hide, and of all patterns,
Charon's boat probably among the rest, and
some with lofty prows and poops, like the stately
vessels of the ancients, scarcely moving in the
sluggish current, — like the great fleets, the
dense Chinese cities of boats, with which you
mingle on entering some great mart, some New
York or Canton, which we are all steadily ap-

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 239

preaching together. How gently each has been
deposited on the water ! No violence has been
used towards them yet, though, perchance, pal
pitating hearts were present at the launching.
And painted ducks, too, the splendid wood-duck
among the rest, often come to sail and float
amid the painted leaves, — barks of a nobler
model still!

What wholesome herb-drinks are to be had
in the swamps now ! What strong medicinal,
but rich, scents from the decaying leaves ! The
rain falling on the freshly dried herbs and leaves,
and filling the pools and ditches into which they
have dropped thus clean and rigid, will soon con
vert them into tea, — green, black, brown, and
yellow teas, of all degrees of strength, enough
to set all Nature a gossiping. Whether we
drink them or not, as yet, before their strength
is drawn, theke leaves, dried on great Nature's
coppers, are of such various pure and delicate
tints as might make the fame of Oriental teas.

How they are mixed up, of all species, Oak
and Maple and Chestnut and Birch ! But Na
ture is not cluttered with them ; she is a perfect
husbandman ; she stores them all. Consider
what a vast crop is thus annually shed on the
earth ! This, more than any mere grain or seed,
is the great harvest of the year. The trees are
now repaying the earth with interest what they

240 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

have taken from it. They are discounting. They
are about to add a leaf's thickness to the depth
of the soil. This is the beautiful way in which
Nature gets her muck, while I chaffer with this
man and that, who talks to me about sulphur
and the cost of carting. We are all the richer
for their decay. I am more interested in this
crop than in the English grass alone or in the
corn. It prepares the virgin mould for future
cornfields and forests, on which the earth fat
tens. It keeps our homestead in good heart.

For beautiful variety no crop can be com
pared with this. Here is not merely the plain
yellow of the grains, but nearly all the colors
that we know, the brightest blue not excepted:
the early blushing Maple, the Poison-Sumach
blazing its sins as scarlet, the mulberry Ash, the
rich chrome-yellow of the Poplars, the brilliant
red Huckleberry, with which the hills' backs are
painted, like those of sheep. The frost touches
them, and, with the slightest breath of returning
day or jarring of earth's axle, see in what show
ers they come floating down ! The ground is
all party-colored with them. But they still live
in the soil, whose fertility and bulk they in
crease, and in the forests that spring from it.
They stoop to rise, to mount higher in coming
years, by subtle chemistry, climbing by the sap
in the trees, and the sapling's first fruits thus

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 241

shed, transmuted at last, may adorn its crown,
when, in after-years, it has become the monarch
of the forest.

It is pleasant to walk over the beds of these
fresh, crisp, and rustling leaves. How beauti
fully they go to their graves ! how gently lay
themselves down and turn to mould! — painted
of a thousand hues, and fit to make the beds of
us living. So they troop to their last resting-
place, light and frisky. They put on no weeds,
but merrily they go scampering over the earth,
selecting the spot, choosing a lot, ordering no
iron fence, whispering all through the woods
about it, — some choosing the spot where the
bodies of men are mouldering beneath, and
meeting them half-way. How many flutter-
ings before they rest quietly in their graves !
They that soared so loftily, how contentedly
they return to dust again, and are laid low, re
signed to lie and decay at the foot of the tree,
and afford nourishment to new generations of
their kind, as well as to flutter on high ! They
teach us how to die. One wonders if the time
will eyer come when men, with their boasted
faith in immortality, will lie down as gracefully
and as ripe, — with such an Indian -summer
serenity will shed their bodies, as they do their
hair and nails.

When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a

16

242 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

cemetery pleasant to walk in. I love to wan
der and muse over them in their graves. Here
are no lying nor vain epitaphs. What though
you own no lot at Mount Auburn ? Your lot
is surely cast somewhere in this vast cemetery,
which has been consecrated from of old. You
need attend no auction to secure a place. There
is room enough here. The Loose-strife shall
bloom and the Huckleberry-bird sing over your
bones. The woodman and hunter shall be your
sextons, and the children shall tread upon the
borders as much as they will. Let us walk in
the cemetery of the leaves, — this is your true
Greenwood Cemetery.

THE SUGAR-MAPLE.

BUT think not that the splendor of the year
is over ; for as one leaf does not make a sum
mer, neither does one falling leaf make an au
tumn. The smallest Sugar- Maples in our
streets make a great show as early as the fifth
of October, more than any other trees there.
As I look up the Main Street, they appear like
painted screens standing before the houses ; yet
many are green. But now, or generally by the
seventeenth of October, when almost all Red
Maples, and some White Maples, are bare, the
large Sugar- Maples also are in their glory, glow-

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 243

ing with yellow and red, and show unexpectedly
bright and delicate tints. They are remarkable
for the contrast they often afford of deep blush
ing red on one half and green on the other.
They become at length dense masses of rich
yellow with a deep scarlet blush, or more than
blush, on the exposed surfaces. They are the
brightest trees now in the street.

The large ones on our Common are particu
larly beautiful. A delicate, but warmer than
golden yellow is now the prevailing color, with
scarlet cheeks. Yet, standing on the east side
of the Common just before sundown, when the
western light is transmitted through them, I
see that their yellow even, compared with the
pale lemon yellow of an Elm close by, amounts
to a scarlet, without noticing the bright scarlet
portions. Generally, they are great regular oval
masses of yellow and scarlet. All the sunny
warmth of the season, the Indian - summer,
seems to be absorbed in their leaves. The
lowest and inmost leaves next the bole are, as
usual, of the most delicate yellow and green,
like the complexion of young men brought up
in the house. There is an auction on the Com
mon to-day, but its red flag is hard to be dis
cerned amid this blaze of color.

Little did the fathers of the town anticipate
this brilliant success, when they caused to be im-

244 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

ported from farther in the country some straight
poles with their tops cut off, which they called
S ugar- Maples ; and, as I remember, after they
were set out, a neighboring merchant's clerk, by
way of jest, planted beans about them. Those
which were then jestingly called bean-poles are
to-day far the most beautiful objects notice
able in our streets. They are worth all and
more than they have cost, — though one of the
selectmen, while setting them out, took the cold
which occasioned his death, — if only because
they have filled the open eyes of children with
their rich color unstintedly so many Octobers.
We will not ask them to yield us sugar in the
spring, while they afford us so fair a prospect in
the autumn. Wealth in-doors may be the in
heritance of few, but it is equally distributed
on the Common. All children alike can revel
in this golden harvest.

Surely trees should be set in our streets with
a view to their October splendor ; though I
doubt whether this is ever considered by the
" Tree Society." Do you not think it will make
some odds to these children that they were
brought up under the Maples ? Hundreds of
eyes are steadily drinking in this color, and J,>y
these teachers even the truants are caught and
educated the moment they step abroad. Indeed,
neither the truant nor the studious is at present

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 245

taught color in the schools. These are instead
of the bright colors in apothecaries' shops and
city windows. It is a pity that we have no
more Red Maples, and some Hickories, in our
streets as well. Our paint-box is very imper
fectly filled. Instead of, or beside, supplying
such paint-boxes as we do, we might supply
these natural colors to the young. Where else
will they study color under greater advantages ?
What School of Design can vie with this ?
Think how much the eyes of painters of all
kinds, and of manufacturers of cloth and paper,
and paper-stainers, and countless others, are to
be educated by these autumnal colors. The sta
tioner's envelopes may be of very various tints,
yet, not so various as those of the leaves of a
single tree. If you want a different shade or
tint of a particular color, you have only to look
farther within or without the tree or the wood.
These leaves are not many dipped in one dye,
as at the dye-house, but they are dyed in light
of infinitely various degrees of strength, and left
to set and dry there.

Shall the names of so many of our colors
continue to be derived from those of obscure
foreign localities, as Naples yellow, Prussian
blue, raw Sienna, burnt Umber, Gamboge ? -
(surely the Tyrian purple must have faded by
this time), — or from comparatively trivial arti-

246 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

cles of commerce, — chocolate, lemon, coffee,
cinnamon, claret ? — (shall we compare our
Hickory to a lemon, or a lemon to a Hick
ory ?) — or from ores and oxides which few
ever see ? Shall we so often, when describing
to our neighbors the color of something we have
seen, refer them, not to some natural object in
our neighborhood, but perchance to a bit of
earth fetched from the other side of the planet,
which possibly they may find at the apothe
cary's, but which probably neither they nor we
ever saw ? Have we not an earth under our
feet, — ay, and a sky over our heads? Or is the
last all ultramarine ? What do we know of
sapphire, amethyst, emerald, ruby, amber, and
the like, — most of us who take these names in
vain ? Leave these precious words to ^cabinet-
keepers, virtuosos, and maids-of-honor, — to the
Nabobs, Begums, and Chobdars of Hindostan,
or wherever else. I do not see why, since Amer
ica and her autumn woods have been discovered,
our leaves should not compete with the precious
stones in giving names to colors ; and, indeed, I
believe that in course of time the names of some
of our trees and shrubs, as well as flowers, will
get into our popular chromatic nomenclature.
But of much more importance than a knowl
edge of the names and distinctions of color is
the joy and exhilaration which these colored

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 247

leaves excite. Already these brilliant trees
throughout the street, without any more variety,
are at least equal to an annual festival and holi
day, or a week of such. These are cheap and
innocent gala-days, celebrated by one and all
without the aid of committees or marshals, such
a show as may safely be licensed, not attracting
gamblers or rum-sellers, not requiring any special
police to keep the peace. And poor indeed must
be that New-England village's October which
has not the Maple in its streets. This October
festival costs no powder, nor ringing of bells,
but every tree is a living liberty-pole on which a
thousand bright flags are waving.

No wonder that we must have our annual
Cattle-Show, and Fall Training, and perhaps
Cornwallis, our September Courts, and the
like. Nature herself holds her annual fair in
October, not only in the streets, but in every
hollow and on every hill-side. When lately we
looked into that Red- Maple swamp all ablaze,
where the trees were clothed in their vestures
of most dazzling tints, did it not suggest a
thousand gypsies beneath, — a race capable
of wild delight, — or even the fabled fawns,
satyrs, and wood-nymphs come back to earth ?
Or was it only a congregation of wearied wood-
choppers, or of proprietors come to inspect their
lots, that we thought of ? Or, earlier still, when

248 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

we paddled on the river through that fine-grained
September air, did there not appear to be some
thing new going on under the sparkling surface
of the stream, a shaking of props, at least, so
that we made haste in order to be up in time ?
Did not the rows of yellowing Willows and
Button-Bushes on each side seem like rows
of booths, under which, perhaps, some fluvia-
tile egg-pop equally yellow was effervescing?
Did not all these suggest that man's spirits
should rise as high as Nature's, — should hang
out their flag, and the routine of his life be in
terrupted by an analogous expression of joy and
hilarity ?

No annual training or muster of soldiery, no
celebration with its scarfs and banners, could
import into the town a hundredth part of the
annual splendor of our October. We have only
to set the trees, or let them stand, and Nature
will find the colored drapery, — flags of all her
nations, some of whose private signals hardly
the botanist can read, — while we walk under
the triumphal arches of the Elms. Leave it to
Nature to appoint the days, whether the same
as in neighboring States or not, and let the
clergy read her proclamations, if they can un
derstand them. Behold what a brilliant drap
ery is her Woodbine flag ! What public- spir
ited merchant, think you, has contributed this

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 249

part of the show ? There is no handsomer
shingling and paint than this vine, at present
covering a whole side of some -houses. I do
not believe that the Ivy never sere is compara
ble to it. No wonder it has been extensively
introduced into London. Let us have a good
many Maples and Hickories and Scarlet Oaks,
then, I say. Blaze away ! Shall that dirty
roll of bunting in the gun-house be all the colors
a village can display ? A village is not com
plete, unless it have these trees to mark the
season in it. They are important, like the
town-clock. A village that has them not will
not be found to work well. It has a screw
loose, an essential part is wanting. Let us
have Willows for spring, Elms for summer,
Maples and Walnuts and Tupeloes for au
tumn, Evergreens for winter, and Oaks for
all seasons. What is a gallery in a house to
a gallery in the streets, which every market-
man rides through, whether he will or not?
Of course, there is not a picture-gallery in the
country which would be worth so much to us
as is the western view at sunset under the
Elrns of our main street. They are the frame
to a picture which is daily painted behind
them. An avenue of Elms as large as our
largest and three* miles long would seern to
lead to some admirable place, though only
C were at the end of it.

250 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

A village needs these innocent stimulants of
bright and cheering prospects to keep off melan
choly and superstition. Show me two villages,
one embowered in trees and blazing with all the
glories of October, the other a merely trivial and
treeless waste, or with only a single tree or two
for suicides, and I shall be sure that in the lat
ter will be found the most starved and bigoted
religionists and the most desperate drinkers.
Every washtub and milkcan and gravestone
will be exposed. The inhabitants will disap
pear abruptly behind their barns and houses,
like desert Arabs amid their rocks, and I shall
look to see spears in their hands. They will be
ready to accept the most barren and forlorn
doctrine, — as that the world is speedily com
ing to an end, or has already got to it, or that
they themselves are turned wrong side outward.
They will perchance crack their dry joints at
one another and call it a spiritual communi
cation.

But to confine ourselves to the Maples.
What if we were to take half as much pains
in protecting them as we do in setting them
out, — not stupidly tie our horses to our dahlia-
stems ?

What meant the fathers by establishing this
perfectly living institution before the church, —
this institution which needs no repairing nor

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 251

repainting, which is continually enlarged and
repaired by its growth? Surely they

" Wrought in a sad sincerity ;
Themselves from God they could not free ;
They planted better than they knew ; —
The conscious trees to beauty grew."

Verily these Maples are cheap preachers, per
manently settled, which preach their half-cen
tury, and century, ay, and century-and-a-half
sermons, with constantly increasing unction and
influence, ministering to many generations of
men ; and the least we can do is to supply them
with suitable colleagues as they grow infirm.

THE SCARLET OAK.

BELONGING to a genus which is remarkable
for the beautiful form of its leaves, I suspect
that some Scarlet-Oak leaves surpass those of
all other Oaks in the rich and wild beauty of
their outlines. I judge from an acquaintance
with twelve species, and from drawings which
I have seen of many others.

Stand under this tree and see how finely its
leaves are cut against the sky, — as it were,
only a few sharp points extending from a mid
rib. They look like double, treble, or quadruple
crosses. They are far more ethereal than the

252 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

less deeply scolloped Oak-leaves. They have
so little leafy terra ftrma that they appear melt
ing away in the light, and scarcely obstruct our
view. The leaves of very young plants are, like
those of full-grown Oaks of other species, more
entire, simple, and lumpish in their outlines;
but these, raised high on old trees, have solved
the leafy problem. Lifted higher and higher,
and sublimated more and more, putting off
some earthiness and cultivating more intimacy
with the light each year, they have at length the
least possible amount of earthy matter, arid the
greatest spread and grasp of skyey influences.
There they dance, arm in arm with the light, —
tripping it on fantastic points, fit partners in
those aerial halls. So intimately mingled are
they with it, that, what with their slenderness
and their glossy surfaces, you can hardly tell at
last what in the dance is leaf and what is light.
And when no zephyr stirs, they are at most but
a rich tracery to the forest-windows.

I am again struck with their beauty, when,
a month later, they thickly strew the ground
in the woods, piled one upon another under
my feet. They are then brown above, but
purple beneath. With their narrow lobes and
their bold deep scollops reaching almost to the
middle, they suggest that the material must be
cheap, or else there has been a lavish expense

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 253

in their creation, as if so much had been cut
out. Or else they seem to us the remnants of
the stuff out of which leaves have been cut
with a die. Indeed, when they lie thus one
upon another, they remind me of a pile of
scrap-tin.

Or bring one home, and study it closely at
your leisure, by the fireside. It is a type, not
from any Oxford font, not in the Basque nor
the arrow-headed character, not found on the
Rosetta Stone, but destined to be copied in
sculpture one day, if they ever get to whit
tling stone here. What a wild and pleasing
outline, a combination of graceful curves and
angles! The eye rests with equal delight on
what is not leaf and on what is leaf, — on
the broad, free, open sinuses, and on the long,
sharp, bristle-pointed lobes. A simple oval out
line would include it all, if you connected the
points of the leaf; but how much richer is it
than that, with its half-dozen deep scollops, in
which the eye and thought of the beholder are
embayed ! If I were a drawing-master, I would
set my pupils to copying these leaves, that they
might learn to draw firmly and gracefully.

Regarded as water, it is like a pond with half
a dozen broad rounded promontories extending
nearly to its middle, half from each side, while
its watery bays extend far inland, like sharp

254 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

friths, at each of whose heads several fine
streams empty in, — almost a leafy archipel
ago.

But it oftener suggests land, and, as Diony-
sius and Pliny compared the form of the Morea
to that of the leaf of the Oriental Plane-tree,
so this leaf reminds me of some fair wild island
in the ocean, whose extensive coast, alternate
rounded bays with smooth strands, and sharp-
pointed rocky capes, mark it as fitted for the
habitation of man, and destined to become a
centre of civilization at last. To the sailor's
eye, it is a much-indented shore. Is it not, in
fact, a shore to the aerial ocean, on which the
windy surf beats ? At sight of this leaf we are
all mariners, — .if not vikings, buccaneers, and
filibusters. Both our love of repose and our
spirit of adventure are addressed. In our most
casual glance, perchance, we think, that, if we
succeed in doubling those sharp capes, we shall
find deep, smooth, and secure havens in the
ample bays. How different from the White-
Oak leaf, with its rounded headlands, on which
no lighthouse need be placed! That is an Eng
land, with its long civil history, that may be
read. This is some still unsettled New-found
Island or Celebes. Shall we go and be rajahs
there ?

By the twenty-sixth of October the large

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 255

Scarlet Oaks are in their prime, when other
Oaks are usually withered. They have been
kindling their fires for a week past, and now
generally burst into a blaze. This alone of
our indigenous deciduous trees (excepting the
Dogwood, of which I do not know half a
dozen, and they are but large bushes) is now
in its glory. The two Aspens and the Sugar-
Maple come nearest to it in date, but they
have lost the greater part of their leaves. Of
evergreens, only the Pitch-Pine is still com
monly bright.

But it requires a particular alertness, if not
devotion to these phenomena, to appreciate the
wide-spread, but late and unexpected glory of
the Scarlet Oaks. I do not speak here of the
small trees and shrubs, which are commonly
observed, and which are now withered, but
of the large trees. Most go in and shut
their doors, thinking that bleak and colorless
November has already come, when some of
the most brilliant and memorable colors are
not yet lit.

This very perfect and vigorous one, about
forty feet high, standing in an open pasture,
which was quite glossy green on the twelfth,
is now, the twenty-sixth, completely changed
to bright dark scarlet, — every leaf, between
you and the sun, as if it had been dipped

256 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

into a scarlet dye. The whole tree is much like
a heart in form, as well as color. Was not
this worth waiting for? Little did you think,
ten days ago, that that cold green tree would
assume such color as this. Its leaves are still
firmly attached, while those of other trees are
falling around it. It seems to say, — "I am
the last to blush, but I blush deeper than any
of ye. I bring up the rear in my red coat.
We Scarlet ones, alone of Oaks, have not
given up the fight."

The sap is now, and even- far into Novem
ber, frequently flowing fast in these trees, as in
Maples in the spring ; and apparently their
bright tints, now that most other Oaks are
withered, are connected with this phenomenon.
They are full of life. It has a pleasantly astrin
gent, acorn-like taste, this strong Oak-wine, as
I find on tapping them with my knife.

Looking across this woodland valley, a quar
ter of a mile wide, how rich those Scarlet Oaks,
embosomed in Pines, their bright red branches
intimately intermingled with them ! They have
their full effect there. The Pine-boughs are the
green calyx to their red petals. Or, as we go
along a road in the woods, the sun striking end
wise through it, and lighting up the red tents
of the Oaks, which on each side are mingled
with the liquid green of the Pines, makes a

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 257

very gorgeous scene. Indeed, without the ever
greens for contrast, the autumnal tints would
lose much of their effect.

The Scarlet Oak asks a clear sky and the
brightness of late October days. These bring
out its colors. If the sun goes into a cloud,
they become comparatively indistinct. As I sit
on a cliff in the southwest part of our town, the
sun is now getting low, and the woods in Lin
coln, south and east of me, are lit up by its more
level rays ; and in the Scarlet Oaks, scattered so
equally over the forest, there is brought out a
more brilliant redness than I had believed was
in them. Every tree of this species which is
visible in those directions, even to the horizon,
now stands out distinctly red. Some great ones
lift their red backs high above the woods, in the
next town, like huge roses with a myriad of fine
petals ; and some more slender ones, in a small
grove of White Pines on Pine Hill in the east, on
the very verge of the horizon, alternating with
the Pines on the edge of the grove, and shoul
dering them with their red coats, look like sol
diers in red amid hunters in green. This time it
is Lincoln green, too. Till the sun got low, I did
not believe that there were so many red coats in
the forest army. Theirs is an intense burning
red, which would lose some of its strength, me-
thinks, with every step you might take toward

17

258 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

them ; for the shade that lurks amid their foli
age does not report itself at this distance, and
they are unanimously red. The focus of their
reflected color is in the atmosphere far on this
side. Every such tree becomes a nucleus of
red, as it were, where, with the declining sun,
that color grows and glows. It is partly bor
rowed fire, gathering strength from the sun on
its way to your eye. It has only some compar
atively dull red leaves for a rallying-point, or
kindling-stuff, to start it, and it becomes an
intense scarlet or red mist, or fire, which finds
fuel for itself in the very atmosphere. So viva
cious is redness. The very rails reflect a rosy
light at this hour and season. You see a redder
tree than exists.

If you wish to count the Scarlet Oaks, do it
now. In a clear day stand thus on a hill-top in
the woods, when the sun is an hour high, and
every one within range of your vision, excepting
in the west, will be revealed. You might live
to the age of Methuselah and never find a tithe
of them, otherwise. Yet sometimes even in
a dark day I have thought them as bright as
I ever saw them. Looking westward, their
colors are lost in a blaze of light; but in other
directions the whole forest is a flower-garden, in
which these late roses burn, alternating with
green, while the so-called " gardeners," walking

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 259

here and there, perchance, beneath, with spade
and water-pot, see only a few little asters amid
withered leaves.

These are my China-asters, my late garden-
flowers. It costs me nothing for a gardener.
The falling leaves, all over the forest, are pro
tecting the roots of my plants. Only look at
what is to be seen, and you will have garden
enough, without deepening the soil in your yard.
We have only to elevate our view a little, to see
the whole forest as a garden. The blossoming
of the Scarlet Oak, — the forest-flower, sur
passing all in splendor, (at least since the Ma
ple) ! I do not know but they interest me more
than the Maples, they are so widely and equally
dispersed throughout the forest ; they are so
hardy, a nobler tree on the whole ; — our
chief November flower, abiding the approach
of winter with us, imparting warmth to early
November prospects. It is remarkable that the
latest bright color that is general should be this
deep, dark scarlet and red, the intensest of
colors. The ripest fruit of the year ; like the
cheek of a hard, glossy, red apple, from the cold
Isle of Orleans, which will not be mellow for
eating till next spring ! When I rise to a hill
top, a thousand of these great Oak roses, dis
tributed on every side, as far as the horizon !
I admire them four or five miles off! This my

260 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

unfailing prospect for a fortnight past! This
late forest-flower surpasses all that spring or
summer could do. Their colors were but rare
and dainty specks comparatively, (created for
the near-sighted, who walk amid the humblest
herbs and underwoods,) and made no impres
sion on a distant eye. Now it is an extended
forest or a mountain-side, through or along
which we journey from day to day, that bursts
into bloom. Comparatively, our gardening is
on a petty scale, — the gardener still nursing
a few asters amid dead weeds, ignorant of the
gigantic asters and roses, which, as it were,
overshadow him, and ask for none of his care.
It is like a little red paint ground on a saucer,
and held up against the sunset sky. Why not
take more elevated and broader views, walk
in the great garden, not skulk in a little " de
bauched " nook of it ? consider the beauty of
the forest, and not merely of a few impounded
herbs ?

Let your walks now be a little more adven
turous ; ascend the hills. If, about the last of
October, you ascend any hill in the outskirts
of our town, and probably of yours, and look

over the forest, you may see "well, what I

have endeavored to describe. All this you
surely will see, and much more, if you are pre
pared to see it, — if you look for it. Otherwise,

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 261

regular and universal as this phenomenon is,
whether you stand on the hill-top or in the hol
low, you will think for threescore years and ten
that all the wood is, at this season, sere and
brown. Objects are concealed from our view,
not so much because they are out of the course
of our visual ray as because we do not bring
our minds and eyes to bear on them ; for there
is no power to see in the eye itself, any more
than in any other jelly. We do not realize how
far and widely, or how near and narrowly, we
are to look. The greater part of the phenomena
of Nature are for this reason concealed from us
all our lives. The gardener sees only the gar
dener's garden. Here, too, as in political econ
omy, the supply answers to the demand. Nature
does not cast pearls before swine. There is just
as much beauty visible to us in the landscape
as we are prepared to appreciate, — not a grain
more. The actual objects which one man will
see from a particular hill-top are just as different
from those which another will see as the behold
ers are different. The Scarlet Oak must, in a
sense, be in your eye when you go forth. We
cannot see anything until we are possessed with
the idea of it, take it into our heads, — and then
we can hardly see anything else. In my botan
ical rambles, I find, that, first, the idea, or image,
of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may

262 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

seem very foreign to this locality, — no nearer
than Hudson's Bay, — and for some weeks or
months I go thinking of it, and expecting it,
unconsciously, and at length I surely see it.
This is the history of my finding a score or
more of rare plants, which I could name. A
man sees only what concerns him. . A botanist
absorbed in the study of grasses does not distin
guish the grandest Pasture Oaks. He, as it
were, tramples down Oaks unwittingly in his
walk, or at most sees only their shadows. I
have found that it required a different inten
tion of the eye, in the same locality, to see
different plants, even when they were closely
allied, as Juncaceas and Gramineos : when I was
looking for the former, I did not see the latter in
the midst of them. How much more, then, it
requires different intentions of the eye and of
the mind to attend to different departments of
knowledge ! How differently the poet and the
naturalist look at objects !

Take a New-England selectman, and set him
on the highest of our hills, and tell him to look,
— sharpening his sight to the utmost, and put
ting on the glasses that suit him best, (ay, using
a spy-glass, if he likes,) — and make a full report.
What, probably, will he spy ? — what will he
select to look at? Of course, he will see a
Brocken spectre of himself. He will see sev-

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 263

eral meeting-houses, at least, and, perhaps, that
somebody ought to be assessed higher than he
is, since he has so handsome a wood-lot. Now
take Julius Caesar, or Immanuel Swedenborg,
or a Fegee-Islander, and set him up there.
Or suppose all together, and let them com
pare notes afterward. Will it appear that
they have enjoyed the same prospect? What
they will see will be as different as Rome
was from Heaven or Hell, or the last from
the Fegee Islands. For aught we know, as
strange a man as any of these is always at
our elbow.

Why, it takes a sharp-shooter to bring down
even such trivial game as snipes and wood
cocks ; he must take very particular aim, and
know what he is aiming at. He would stand
a very small chance, if he fired at random into
the sky, being told that snipes were flying there.
And so is it with him that shoots at beauty ;
though he wait till the sky falls, he will not bag
any, if he does not already know its seasons
and haunts, and the color of its wing, — if he
has not dreamed of it, so that he can anticipate
it ; then, indeed, he flushes it at every step,
shoots double and on the wing, with both bar
rels, even in cornfields. The sportsman trains
himself, dresses and watches unweariedly, and
loads and primes for his particular game. He

264 AUTUMNAL TINTS.

prays for it, and offers sacrifices, and so he gets
it. After due and long preparation, schooling his
eye and hand, dreaming awake and asleep, with
gun and paddle and boat he goes out after
meadow-hens, which most of his townsmen
never saw nor dreamed of, and paddles for
miles against a head-wind, and wades in water
up to his knees, being out all day without his
dinner, and therefore he gets them. He had
them half-way into his bag when he started,
and has only to shove them down. The true
sportsman can shoot you almost any of his
game from his windows : what else has he
windows or eyes for? It comes and perches
at last on the barrel of his gun ; but the rest
of the world never see it with the feathers on.
The geese fly exactly under his zenith, and
honk when they get there, and he will keep
himself supplied by firing up his chimney ;
twenty musquash have the refusal of each one
of his traps before it is empty. If he lives, and
his game-spirit increases, heaven and earth shaU
fail him sooner than game ; and when he dies,
he will go to more extensive, and, perchance,
happier hunting-grounds. The fisherman, too,
dreams of fish, sees a bobbing cork in his
dreams, till he can almost catch them in his
sink-spout. I knew a girl who, being sent to
pick huckleberries, picked wild gooseberries by

AUTUMNAL TINTS. 265

the quart, where no one else knew that there
were any, because she was accustomed to pick
them up country where she came from. The
astronomer knows where to go star-gathering,
and sees one clearly in his mind before any
have seen it with a glass. The hen scratches
and finds her food right under where she stands ;
but such is not the way with the hawk.

These bright leaves which I have mentioned
are not the exception, but the rule ; for I believe
that all leaves, even grasses and mosses, acquire
brighter colors just before their fall. When you
come to observe faithfully the changes of each
humblest plant, you find that each has, sooner
or later, its peculiar autumnal tint ; and if you
undertake to make a complete list of the bright
tints, it will be nearly as long as a catalogue of
the plants in your vicinity.

WILD APPLES.

(1862.)
THE HISTORY OF THE APPLE-TREE.

IT is remarkable how closely the history of
the Apple-tree is connected with that of man.
The geologist tells us that the order of the
Rosacece, which includes the Apple, also the
true Grasses, and the Labiate, or Mints, were
introduced only a short time previous to the
appearance of man on the globe.

It appears that apples made a part of the
food of that unknown primitive people whose
traces have lately been found at the bottom
of the Swiss lakes, supposed to be older than
the foundation of Rome, so old that they had
no metallic implements. An entire black and
shrivelled Crab- Apple has been recovered from
their storps.

Tacitus says of the ancient Germans, that
they satisfied their hunger with wild apples
(agrestid poma) among other things.

Niebuhr observes that " the words for a house,

WILD APPLES. 267

a field, a plough, ploughing, wine, oil, milk,
sheep, apples, and others relating to agricul
ture and the gentler way of life, agree in
Latin and Greek, while the Latin words for
all objects pertaining to war or the chase are
utterly alien from the Greek." Thus the ap
ple-tree may be considered a symbol of peace
no less than the olive.

The apple was early so important, and gener
ally distributed, that its name traced to its root
in many languages signifies fruit in general.
M>}Aoi/, in Greek, means an apple, also the fruit
of other trees, also a sheep and any cattle, and
finally riches in general.

The apple-tree has been celebrated by the
Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, and Scandinavians.
Some have thought that the first human pair
were tempted by its fruit. Goddesses are fabled
to have contended for it, dragons were set to
watch it, and heroes were employed to pluck it.

The tree is mentioned in at least three places
in the Old Testament, and its fruit in two or
three more. Solomon sings, — " As the apple-
tree among the trees of the wood, so is my
beloved among the sons." And again, — " Stay
me with flagons, comfort me with apples." The
noblest part of man's noblest feature is named
from this fruit, " the apple of the eye."

The apple-tree is also mentioned by Homer

268 WILD APPLES.

and Herodotus. Ulysses saw in the glorious
garden of Alcinoiis "pears and pomegranates,
and apple-trees bearing beautiful fruit " (K<U
M\iai dyAaoKapTroi). And according to Homer,
apples were among the fruits which Tantalus
could not pluck, the wind ever blowing their
boughs away from him. Theophrastus knew
and described the apple-tree as a botanist.

According to the, Prose Edda, " Iduna keeps
in a box the apples which the gods, when they
feel old age approaching, have only to taste of
to become young again. It is in this manner
that they will be kept in renovated youth until
Ragnarok" (or the destruction of the gods).

I learn from Loudon that "the ancient Welsh
bards were rewarded for excelling in song by the
token of the apple-spray ; " and " in the High
lands of Scotland the apple-tree is the badge of
the clan Lamont."

The apple-tree (Pyrus malm) belongs chiefly
to the northern temperate zone. Loudori says,
that " it grows spontaneously in every part of
Europe except the frigid zone, and throughout
"Western Asia, China, and Japan." We have
also two or three varieties of the apple in
digenous in North America. The cultivated
apple-tree was first introduced into this coun
try by the earliest settlers, and is thought to
do as well or better here than anywhere else.

WILD APPLES. 269

Probably some of the varieties which are now
cultivated were first introduced into Britain by
the Romans.

Pliny, adopting the distinction of Theophras-
tus, says, — " Of trees there are some which are
altogether wild (sylvestres)^ some more civilized
(urbaniores)" Theophrastus includes the apple
among the last ; and, indeed, it is in this sense
the most civilized of all trees. It is as harmless
as a dove, as beautiful as a rose, and as valu
able as flocks and herds. It has been longer
cultivated than any other, and so is more hu
manized ; and who knows but, like the dog,
it will at length be no longer traceable to its
wild original ? It migrates with man, like the
dog and horse and cow : first, perchance, from
Greece to Italy, thence to England, thence to
America ; and our Western emigrant is still
marching steadily toward the setting sun with
the seeds of the apple in his pocket, or perhaps
a few young trees strapped to his load. At
least a million apple-trees are thus set farther
westward this year than any cultivated ones
grew last year. Consider how the Blossom-
Week, like the Sabbath, is thus annually
spreading over the prairies ; for when man
migrates, he carries with him not only his
birds, quadrupeds, insects, vegetables, and his
very sward, but his orchard also.

270 WILD APPLES.

The leaves and tender twigs are an agree
able food to many domestic animals, as the
cow, horse, sheep, and goat ; and the fruit
is sought after by the first, as well as by the
hog. Thus there appears to have existed a
natural alliance between these animals and
this tree from the first. "The fruit of the
Crab in the forests of France " is said to be
" a great resource for the wild-boar."

Not only the Indian, but many indigenous
insects, birds, and quadrupeds, welcomed the
apple-tree to these shores. The tent-caterpil
lar saddled her eggs on the very first twig
that was formed, and it has since shared her
affections with the wild cherry ; and the can
ker-worm also in a measure abandoned the
elm to feed on it. As it grew apace, the blue
bird, robin, cherry-bird, king-bird, and many
more, came with haste and built their nests
and warbled in its boughs, and so became
orchard-birds, and multiplied more than ever.
It was an era in the history of their race.
The downy woodpecker found such a savory
morsel under its bark, that he perforated it in
a ring quite round the tree, before he left it, —
a thing which he had never done before, to my
knowledge. It did not take the partridge long
to find out how sweet its buds were, and every
winter eve she flew, and still flies, from the

WILD APPLES. 271

wood, to pluck them, much to the farmer's sor
row. The rabbit, too, was not slow to learn the
taste of its twigs and bark ; and when the fruit
was ripe, the squirrel half-rolled, half-carried it
to his hole ; and even the musquash crept up
the bank from the brook at evening, and greed
ily devoured it, until he had worn a path in the
grass there ; and when it was frozen and thaw
ed, the crow and the jay were glad to taste it
occasionally. The owl crept into the first ap
ple-tree that became hollow, arid fairly hooted
with delight, finding it just the place for him;
so, settling down into it, he has remained there
ever since.

My theme being the Wild Apple, I will merely
glance at some of the seasons in the annual
growth of the cultivated apple, and pass on to
my special province.

The flowers of the apple are perhaps the most
beautiful of any tree's, so copious and so delicious
to both sight and scent. The walker is fre
quently tempted to turn and linger near some
more than usually handsome one, whose blos
soms are two thirds expanded. How superior it
is in these respects to the pear, whose blossoms
are 'neither colored nor fragrant !

By the middle of July, green apples are so
large as to remind us 'of coddling, and of the au
tumn. The sward is commonly strewed with

272 WILD APPLES.

little ones which fall still-born, as it were, — Na
ture thus thinning them for us. The Roman
writer Palladius said, — " If apples are inclined
to fall before their time, a stone placed in a split
root will retain them." Some such notion, still
surviving, may account for some of the stones
which we see placed to be overgrown in the
forks of trees. They have a saying in Suffolk,
England, —

" At Michaelmas time, or a little before,
Half an apple goes to the core."

Early apples begin to be ripe about the first
of August; but I think that none of them are
so good to eat as some to smell. One is worth
more to scent your handkerchief with than any
perfume which they sell in the shops. The fra
grance of some fruits is not to be forgotten,
along with that of flowers. Some gnarly apple
which I pick up in the road reminds me by its
fragrance of all the wealth of Pomona, — car
rying me forward to those days when they will
be collected in golden and ruddy heaps in the
orchards and about the cider-mills.

A week or two later, as you are going by or
chards or gardens, especially in the evenings, you
pass through a little region possessed by the
fragrance of ripe apples, and thus enjoy them
without price, and without robbing anybody.

WILD APPLES. 273

There is thus about all natural products a cer
tain volatile and ethereal quality which represents
their highest value, and which cannot be vulgar
ized, or bought and sold. No mortal has ever en
joyed the perfect flavor of any fruit, and only the
godlike among men begin to taste its ambrosial
qualities. [For nectar and ambrosia are only
those fine flavors of every earthly fruit which our
coarse palates fail to perceive,) — just as we oc
cupy the heaven of the gods without knowing it.
When I see a particularly mean man carrying a
load of fair and fragrant early apples to market,
I seem to see a contest going on between him
and his horse, on the one side, and the apples on
the other, and, to my mind, the apples always
gain it. Pliny says that apples are the heaviest
of all things, and that the oxen begin to sweat
at the mere sight of a load of them. Our driver
begins to lose his load the moment he tries to
transport them to where they do not belong, that
is, to any but the most beautiful. Though he
gets out from time to time, and feels of them,
and thinks they are all there, I see the stream of
their evanescent and celestial qualities going to
heaven from his cart, \vhile the pulp and skin
and core only are going to market. They are
not apples, but pomace. Are not these still
Iduna's apples, the taste of which keeps the gods
forever young? and think you that they will let
18

274 WILD APPLES.

Loki or Thjassi carry them off to Jotunheim,
while they grow wrinkled and gray ? No, for
Ragnarok, or the destruction of the gods, is not
yet.

There is another thinning of the fruit, com
monly near the end of August or in September,
when the ground is strewn with windfalls ; and
this happens especially when high winds occur
after rain. In some orchards you may see fully
three quarters of the whole crop on the ground,
lying in a circular form beneath the trees, yet
hard and green, — or, if it is a hill-side, rolled far
down the hill. However, it is an ill wind that
blows nobody any good. All the country over,
people are busy picking* up the windfalls, and
this will make them cheap for early apple-pies.

In October, the leaves falling, the apples are
more distinct on the trees. I saw one year in a
neighboring town some trees fuller of fruit than
I remember to have ever seen before, small yel
low apples hanging over the road. The branches
were gracefully drooping with their weight, like
a barberry-bush, so that the whole tree acquired
a new character. Even the topmost branches,
instead of standing erect, spread and drooped in
all directions ; and there were so many poles sup
porting the lower ones, that they looked like pic
tures of banian-trees. As an old English manu
script says, " The mo appelen the tree bcTeth,
the more sche boweth to the folk."

WILD APPLES. 275

Surely the apple is the noblest of fruits. Let
the most beautiful or the swiftest have it. That
should be the " going " price of apples.

Between the fifth and twentieth of October I
see the barrels lie under the trees. And perhaps
I talk with one who is selecting some choice bar
rels to fulfil an order. He turns a specked one
over many times before he leaves it out. If I
were to tell what is passing in my mind, I should
say that every one was specked which he had
handled ; for he rubs off all the bloom, and those
fugacious ethereal qualities leave it. Cool eve-
ings prompt the farmers to make haste, and at
length I see only the ladders here and there left
leaning against the trees.

It would be well, if we accepted these gifts
with more joy and gratitude, and did not think
it enough simply to put a fresh load of compost
about the tree. Some old English customs are
suggestive at least. I find them described
chiefly in Brand's " Popular Antiquities." It
appears that " on Christmas eve the farmers and
their men in Devonshire take a large bowl of
cider, with a toast in it, and carrying it in state
to the orchard, they salute the apple-trees with
much ceremony, in order to make them bear
well the next season." This salutation consists
in " throwing some of the cider about the roots
of the tree, placing bits of the toast on the

276 WILD APPLES.

branches," and then, " encircling one of the best
bearing trees in the orchard, they drink the fol
lowing toast three several times : —

' Here's to thee, old apple-tree,

Whence thou inayst bud, and whence thou inayst blow,
And whence thou mayst bear apples enow !

Hats-full ! caps-full !

Bushel, bushel, sacks-full !

And my pockets full, too ! Hurra ! '"

Also what was called " apple-howling " used
to be practised in various counties of England
on New- Year's eve. A troop of boys visited the
different orchards, and, encircling the apple-trees,
repeated the following words : —

" Stand fast/ root ! bear well, top !
Pray God send us a good howling crop :
Every twig, apples big ;
Every bow, apples enow ! "

" They then shout in chorus, one of the boys ac
companying them on a cow's horn. During this
ceremony they rap the trees with their sticks."
•This is called " wassailing " the trees, and is
thought by some to be " a relic of the heathen
sacrifice to Pomona."
Herrick sings, —

" Wassaile the trees that they may beare
You many a plum and many a peare ;
For more or less fruits they will bring
As you so give them wassailing."

WILD APPLES. 277

Our poets have as yet a better right to sing of
cider than of wine ; but it behooves them to sing
better than English Phillips did, else they will
do no credit to their Muse.

THE WILD APPLE.

So much for the more civilized apple-trees
(urbaniores, as Pliny calls them). I love bet
ter to go through the old orchards of ungrafted
apple-trees, at whatever season of the year, —
so irregularly planted : sometimes two trees
standing close together ; and the rows so de
vious that you would think that they not only
had grown while the owner was sleeping, but
had been set out by him in a somnambulic
state. The rows of grafted fruit will never
tempt me to wander arnid them like these.
But I now, alas, speak rather from memory
than from any recent experience, such ravages
have been made!

Some soils, like a rocky tract called the
Easterbrooks Country in my neighborhood, are
so suited to the apple, that it will grow faster
in them without any care, or if only the ground
is broken up once a year, than it will in many
places with any amount of care. The owners
of this tract allow that the soil is excellent for
fruit, but they say that it is so rocky that they

278 WILD APPLES.

have not patience to plough it, and that, to
gether with the distance, is the reason why it is
not cultivated. There are, or were recently, ex
tensive orchards there standing without order.
Nay, they spring up wild and bear well there
in the midst of pines, birches, maples, and oaks.
I am often surprised to see rising amid these
trees the rounded tops of apple-trees glowing
with red or yellow fruit, in harmony with the
autumnal tints of the forest.

Going up the side of a cliff about the first of
November, I saw a vigorous young apple-tree,
which, planted by birds or cows, had shot up
amid the rocks and open woods there, and had
now much fruit on it, uninjured by the frosts,
when all cultivated apples were gathered. It
was a rank wild growth, with many green
leaves on it still, and made an impression of
thorniness. The fruit was hard and green, but
looked as if it would be palatable in the winter.
Some was dangling on the twigs, but more half-
buried in the wet leaves under the tree, or rolled
far down the hill amid the rocks. The owner
knows nothing of it. The day was not observed
when it first blossomed, nor when it first bore
fruit, unless by the chickadee. There was no
dancing on the green beneath it in its honor,
and now there is no hand to pluck its fruit, —
which is only gnawed by squirrels, as I per-

WILD APPLES. 279

ceive. It has done double duty, — not only
borne this crop, but each twig has grown a
foot into the air. And this is such fruit ! bigger
than many berries, we must admit, and carried
home will be sound and palatable next spring.
What care I for Iduna's apples so long as I can
get these ?

When I go by this shrub thus late and hardy,
and see its dangling fruit, I respect the tree, and
I am grateful for Nature's bounty, even though
I cannot eat it. Here On this-rugged and woody
hill-side has grown an apple-tree, not planted by
man, no relic of a former orchard, but a natural
growth, like the pines and oaks. .Most fruits
which we prize and use depend entirely on our
care. Corn and grain, potatoes, peaches, melons,
etc., depend altogether on our planting ; but the
apple emulates man's independence and enter
prise. It is not simply carried, as I have said,
but, like him, to some extent, it has migrated to
this New World, and is even, here and there,
making its way amid the aboriginal trees; just
as the ox and dog and horse sometimes run wild
and maintain themselves.

Even the sourest and crabbedest apple, grow
ing in the most unfavorable position, suggests
such thoughts as these, it is' so noble a fruit.

230 WILD APPLES.

THE CRAB.

Nevertheless, our wild apple is wild only like
myself, perchance, who belong not to the abo
riginal race here, but have strayed into the
woods from the cultivated stock. Wilder still,
as I have said, there grows elsewhere in this
country a native and aboriginal Crab-Apple,
Mains coronaria, " whose nature has not yet
been modified by cultivation." It is found
from Western New- York to Minnesota, and
southward. Michaux says that its ordinary
height " is fifteen or eighteen feet, but it is
sometimes found twenty-five or thirty feet
high," and that the large ones " exactly resem
ble the common apple-tree." " The flowers are
white mingled with rose -color, and are col
lected in corymbs." They are remarkable for
their delicious odor. The fruit, according to
him, is about an inch and a half in diameter,
and is intensely acid. Yet they make fine
sweetmeats, and also cider of them. He con
cludes, that " if, on being cultivated, it does
not yield new and palatable varieties, it will
at least be celebrated for the beauty of its
flowers, and for the sweetness of its perfume."

I never saw the Crab- Apple till May, 1861.
I had heard of it through Michaux, but more
modern botanists, so far as I know, have not

WILD APPLES. 281

treated it as of any peculiar importance. Thus
it was a half-fabulous tree to me. I contem
plated a pilgrimage to the " Glades," a por
tion of Pennsylvania where it was said to
grow to perfection. I thought of sending to a
nursery for it, but doubted if they had it, or
would distinguish it from European varieties.
At last I had occasion to go to Minnesota,
and on entering Michigan I began to notice
from the cars a tree with handsome rose-col
ored flowers. At first I thought it some va
riety of thorn; but it was not long before the
truth flashed on me, that this was my long-
sought Crab- Apple. It was the prevailing flow
ering shrub or tree to be seen from the cars at
that season of the year, — about the middle of
May. But the cars never stopped before one,
and so I was launched on the bosom of the
Mississippi without having touched one, ex
periencing the fate of Tantalus. On arriving
at St. Anthony's Falls, I was sorry to be told
that I was too far north for the Crab- Apple.
Nevertheless I succeeded in finding it about
eight miles west of the Falls; touched it and
smelled it, and secured a lingering corymb of
flowers for my herbarium. This must have
been near its northern limit.

282- WILD APPLES.

HOW THE WILD APPLE GROWS.

But though these are indigenous, like the
Indians, I doubt whether they are any hardier
than those backwoodsmen among the apple-
trees, which, though descended from cultivated
stocks, plant themselves in distant fields and
forests, where the soil is favorable to them. I
know of no trees which have more difficulties
to contend with, and which more sturdily resist
their foes. These are the ones whose story we
have to tell. It oftentimes reads thus : —

Near the beginning of May, we notice little
thickets of apple-trees just springing up in the
pastures where cattle have been, — as the rocky
ones of our Easterbrooks Country, or the top
of Nobscot Hill, in Sudbury. One or two of
these perhaps survive the drought and other ac
cidents, — their very birthplace defending them
against the encroaching grass and some other
dangers, at first.

In two years' time *t had thus
Reached the level of the rocks,

Admired the stretching world,
Nor feared the wandering flocks.

But at this tender age

Its sufferings began :
There came a browsing ox

And cut it down a span.

WILD APPLES. 283

This time, perhaps, the ox does not notice
it amid the grass; but the next year, when it
has grown more stout, he recognizes it for a
fellow-emigrant from the old country, the flavor
of whose leaves and twigs he well knows ; and
though at first he pauses to welcome it, and
express his surprise, and gets for answer, " The
same cause that brought you here brought me,"
he nevertheless browses it again, reflecting, it
may be, that he has some title to it.

Thus cut down annually, it does not despair;
but, putting forth two short twigs for every one
cut off, it spreads out low along the ground in
the hollows or between the rocks, growing more
stout and scrubby, until it forms, not a tree as
yet, but a little pyramidal, stiff, twiggy mass,
almost as solid and impenetrable as a rock.
Some of the densest and most impenetrable
clumps of bushes that I have ever seen, as
well on account of the closeness and stub
bornness of their branches as of their thorns,
have been these wild-apple scrubs. They are
more like the scrubby fir and black spruce on
which you stand, and sometimes walk, on the
tops of mountains, where cold is the demon
they contend with, than anything else. No
wonder they are prompted to grow thorns at
last, to defend themselves against such foes.
In their thorniness, however, there is no malice,
only some malic acid.

284 WILD APPLES.

The rocky pastures of the tract I have referred
to, — for they maintain their ground best in a
rocky field, — are thickly sprinkled with these
little tufts, reminding you often of some rigid
gray mosses or lichens, and you see thousands
of little trees just springing up between them,
with the seed still attached to them.

Being regularly clipped all around each year
by the cows, as a hedge with shears, they are
often of a perfect conical or pyramidal form,
from one to four feet high, and more or less
sharp, as if trimmed by the gardener's art. In
the pastures on Nobscot Hill and its spurs, they
make fine dark shadows when the sun is low.
They are also an excellent covert from hawks
for many small birds that roost and build in
them. Whole flocks perch in them at night, and
I have seen three robins' nests in one which was
six feet in diameter.

No doubt many of these are already old trees,
if you reckon from the day they were planted,
but infants still when you consider their devel
opment and the long life before them. I counted
the annual rings of some which were just one
foot high, and as wide as high, and found that
they were about twelve years old, but quite
sound and flirifty ! They were so low that they
were unnoticed by the walker, while many of
their contemporaries from the nurseries were

WILD APPLES 285

already bearing considerable crops. But what
you gain in time is perhaps in this case, too,
lost in power, — that is, in the vigor of the tree.
This is their pyramidal state.

The cows continue to browse them thus for
twenty years or more, keeping them down and
compelling them to spread, until at last they are
so broad that they become their own fence, when
some interior shoot, which their foes cannot
reach, darts upward with joy: for it has not for
gotten its high calling, and bears its own pecul
iar fruit in triumph.

Such are the tactics by which it finally defeats
its bovine foes. Now, if you have watched the
progress of a particular shrub, you will see that
it is no longer a simple pyramid or cone, but
that out of .its apex there rises a sprig or two,
growing more lustily perchance than an orchard-
tree, since the plant now devotes the whole of
its repressed energy to these upright parts. In a
short time these become a small tree, an inverted
pyramid resting on the apex of the other, so that
the whole has now the form of a vast hour-glass.
The spreading bottom, having served its pur
pose, finally disappears, and the generous tree
permits the now harmless cows to come in and
stand in its shade, and rub against and redden
its trunk, which has grown in spite of them, and
even to taste a part of its fruit, and so disperse
the seed.

286 WILD APPLES.

Thus the cows create their own shade and
food ; and the tree, its hour-glass being inverted,
lives a second life, as it were.

It is an important question with some nowa
days, whether you should trim young apple-trees
as high as your nose or as high as your eyes.
The ox trims them up as high as he can reach,
and that is about the right height, I think.

In spite of wandering kine, and other adverse
circumstances, that despised shrub, valued only
by small birds as a covert and shelter from
hawks, has its blossom-week at last, and in
course of time its harvest, sincere, though small.

By the end of some October, when its leaves
have fallen, I frequently see such a central sprig,
whose progress I have watched, when I thought
it had forgotten its destiny, as I had, bearing its
first crop of small green or yellow or rosy fruit,
which the cows cannot get at over the bushy and
thorny hedge which surrounds it, and I make
haste to taste the new and undescribed variety.
We have all heard of the numerous varieties of
fruit invented by Van Mons and Knight. This
is the system of Van Cow, and she has invented
far more and more memorable varieties than
both of them.

Through what hardships it may attain to bear
a sweet fruit! Though somewhat small, it may
prove equal, if not superior, in flavor to that

WILD APPLES. 287

which has grown in a garden, — will perchance
be all the sweeter and more palatable for the
very difficulties it has had to contend with.
Who knows but this chance wild fruit, planted
by a cow or a bird on some remote and rocky hill
side, where it is as yet unobserved by man, may
be the choicest of all its kind, and foreign poten
tates shall hear of it, and royal societies seek to
propagate it, though the virtues of the perhaps
truly crabbed owner of the soil may never be
heard of, — at least, beyond the limits of his vil
lage ? It was thus the Porter and the Baldwin
grew.

Every wild-apple shrub excites our expectation
thus, somewhat as every wild child. It is, per
haps, a prince in disguise. What a lesson to
man ! So are human beings, referred to the
highest standard, the celestial fruit which they
suggest and aspire to bear, browsed on by fate ;
and only the most persistent and strongest gen
ius defends itself and prevails, sends a tender
scion upward at last, and drops its perfect fruit
on the ungrateful earth. Poets and philosophers
and statesmen thus spring up in the country
pastures, and outlast the hosts of unoriginal
men.

Such is always the pursuit of knowledge.
The celestial fruits, the golden apples of the
Hesperides, are ever guarded by a hundred-

288 WILD APPLES. '

headed dragon which never sleeps, so that it is
an Herculean labor to pluck them.

This is one, and the most remarkable way, in
which the wild apple is propagated ; but com
monly it springs up at wide intervals in woods
and swamps, and by the sides of roads, as the
soil may suit it, and grows with comparative
rapidity. Those which grow in dense woods
are very tall and slender. I frequently pluck
from these trees a perfectly mild and tamed
fruit. As Palladius says, " Et injussu consterni-
tur ubere mali " : Arid the ground is strewn with
the fruit of an unbidden apple-tree.

It is an old notion, that, if these wild trees do
not bear a valuable fruit of their own, they are
the best stocks by which to transmit to posterity
the most highly prized qualities of others. How
ever, I am not in search of stocks, but the wild
fruit itself, whose fierce gust has suffered no
" inteneration." It is not my

" highest plot
To plant the Bergamot"

THE FRUIT, AND ITS FLAVOR.

The time for wild apples is the last of Oc
tober and the first of November. They then
get to be palatable, for they ripen late, and they
are still perhaps as beautiful as ever. I make a

WILD APPLES. 289

great account of these fruits, which the farmers
do not think it worth the while to gather, — wild
flavors of the Muse, vivacious and inspiriting.
The farmer thinks that he has better in his bar*
rels, but he is mistaken, unless he has a walker's
appetite and imagination, neither of which can
he have.

Such as grow quite wild, and are left out till
the first of November, I presume that the owner
does not mean to gather. They belong to chil
dren as wild as themselves, — to certain active
boys that I know, — to the wild-eyed woman of
the fields, to whom nothing comes amiss, who
gleans after all the world, — and, moreover, to
us walkers. We have met with them, and they
are outs. These rights, long enough insisted
upon, have come to be an institution in some
old countries, where they have learned how to
live. I hear that " the custom of grippling,
which may be called apple-gleaning, is, or was
formerly, practised in Herefordshire. It consists
in leaving a few apples, which are called the
gripples, on every tree, after the general gather
ing, for the boys, who go with climbing-poles
and bags to collect them."

As for those I speak of, I pluck them as a
wild fruit, native to this quarter of the earth, —
fruit of old trees that have been dying ever since
I was a boy and are not yet dead, frequented

19

290 WILD APPLES.

only by the woodpecker and the squirrel, deserted
now by the owner, who has not faith enough to
look under their boughs. From the appearance
of the tree-top, at a little distance, you would
expect nothing but lichens to drop from it, but
your faith is rewarded by finding the ground
strewn with spirited fruit, — some of it, perhaps,
collected at squirrel-holes, with the marks of
their teeth by which they carried them, — some
containing a cricket or two silently feeding
within, and some, especially in damp days, a
shelless snail. The very sticks and stones lodged
in the tree-top might have convinced you of the
savoriness of the fruit which has been so eagerly
sought after in past years.

I have seen no account of these among the
" Fruits and Fruit-Trees of America," though
they are more memorable to my taste than the
grafted kinds; more racy and- wild American
flavors do they possess, when October and No
vember, when December and January, and per
haps February and March even, have assuaged
them somewhat. An old farmer in my neigh
borhood, who always selects the right word,
says that " they have a kind of bow-arrow
tang."

Apples for grafting appear to have been se
lected commonly, not so much for their spirited
flavor, as for their mildness, their size, and bear-

WILD APPLES. 291

ing qualities, — not so much for their beauty, as
for their fairness and soundness. Indeed, I have
no faith in the selected lists of pomological gen
tlemen. Their " Favorites " and " None-suches "
and " Seek-no-farthers," when I have fruited
them, commonly turn out very tame and forget-
able. They are eaten with comparatively little
zest, and have no real tang nor smack to them.

What if some of these wildings are acrid and
puckery, genuine verjuice, do they not still be
long to the Pomacece, which are uniformly inno
cent and kind to our race ? I still begrudge
them to the cider-mill. Perhaps they are not
fairly ripe yet.

No wonder that these small and high-colored
apples are thought to make the best cider. Lou-
don quotes from the " Herefordshire Report,"
that " apples of a small size are always, if equal
in quality, to be preferred to those of a larger
size, in order that the rind and kernel may bear
the greatest proportion to the pulp, which affords
the weakest and most watery juice." And he
says, that, " to prove this, Dr. Symonds, of Here
ford, about the year 1800, made one hogshead
of cider entirely from the rinds and cores of ap
ples, and another from the pulp only, when the
first was found of extraordinary strength and
flavor, while the latter was sweet and insipid."

Evelyn says that the " Red-strake " was the

292 WILD APPLES.

favorite cider-apple in his day ; and he quotes
one Dr. Newburg as saying, " In Jersey 't is a
general observation, as I hear, that the more of
red any apple has in its rind, the more proper it
is for this use. Pale-faced apples they exclude
as much as may be from their cider-vat." This
opinion still prevails.

All apples are good in November. Those
which the farmer leaves out as unsalable, and
unpalatable to those who frequent the markets,
are choicest fruit to the walker. But it is re
markable that the wild apple, which I praise as
so spirited and racy when eaten in the fields or
woods, being brought into the house, has fre
quently a harsh and crabbed taste. The Saun-
terer's Apple not even the saunterer can eat in
the house. The palate rejects it there, as it does
haws and acorns, and demands a tamed one ; for
there you miss the November air, which is the
sauce it is to be eaten with. Accordingly, when
Tityrus, seeing the lengthening shadows, invites
Melibceus to go home and pass the night with
him, he promises him mild apples and soft chest
nuts, — mitia poma, castanece molles. I fre
quently pluck wild apples of so rich and spicy a
flavor that I wonder all orchardists do not get a
scion from that tree, and I fail not to bring home
my pockets full. But perchance, when I take
one out of my desk and taste it in my chamber,

WILD APPLES. 293

I find it unexpectedly crude, — sour enough to
set a squirrel's teeth on edge and make a jay
scream.

These apples have hung in the wind and frost
and rain till they have absorbed the qualities of
the weather or season, and thus are highly sea
soned^ and they pierce and sting and permeate us
with their spirit. They must be eaten in season,
accordingly, — that is, out-of-doors.

To appreciate the wild and sharp flavors of
these October fruits, it is necessary that you be
breathing the sharp October or November air.
The out-door air and exercise which the walker
gets give a different tone to his palate, and he
craves a fruit which the sedentary would call
harsh and crabbed. They must be eaten in the
fields, when your system is all aglow with exer
cise, when the frosty weather nips your fingers,
the wind rattles the bare boughs or rustles the
few remaining leaves, and the jay is heard
screaming around. What is sour in the house
a bracing walk makes sweet. Some of these
apples might be labelled, " To be eaten in the
wind."

Of course no flavors are thrown away ; they
are. intended for the taste that is up to them.
Some apples have two distinct flavors, and per
haps one-half of them must be eaten in the
house, the other out-doors. One Peter Whitney

294 WILD APPLES.

wrote from Northborough in 1782, for the Pro
ceedings of the Boston Academy, describing an
apple-tree in that town " producing fruit of op
posite qualities, part of the same apple being
frequently sour and the other sweet ; " also some
all sour, and others all sweet, and this diversity
on all parts of the tree.

There is a wild apple on Nawshawtuck Hill
in my town which has to me a peculiarly
pleasant bitter tang, not perceived till it is three-
quarters tasted. It remains on the tongue. As
you eat it, it smells exactly like a squash-bug.
It is a sort of triumph to eat and relish it.

I hear that the fruit of a kind of plum-tree in
Provence is " called Prunes sibarelles^ because it
is impossible to whistle after having eaten them,
from their sourness." But perhaps they were
only eaten in the house and in summer, and if
tried out-of-doors in a stinging atmosphere, who
knows but you could whistle an octave higher
and clearer ?

In the fields only are the sours and bitters of
Nature appreciated; just as the wood-chopper
eats his meal in a sunny glade, in the middle of
a winter day, with content, basks in a sunny ray
there and dreams of summer in a degree of cold
which, experienced in a chamber, would make a
student miserable. .They who are at work
abroad are not cold, but rather it is they who sit

WILD APPLES. 295

shivering in houses. As with temperatures, so
with flavors ; as with cold and heat, so with sour
and sweet. This natural raciness, the sours and
bitters which the diseased palate refuses, are the
true condiments.

Let your condiments be in the condition of
your senses. To appreciate the flavor of these
wild apples requires vigorous and healthy senses,
papillce firm and erect on the tongue and palate,
not easily flattened and tamed.

From my experience with wild apples, I can
understand that there may be reason for a sav
age's preferring many kinds of food which the
civilized man rejects. The former has the palate
of an out-door man. It takes a savage or wild
taste to appreciate a wild fruit.

What a healthy out-of-door appetite it takes
to relish the apple of life, the apple of the world,
then!

" Nor is it every apple I desire,

Nor that which pleases every palate best ;
'T is not the lasting Deuxan I require,

Nor yet the red-cheeked Greening I request,
Nor that which first beshrewed the name of wife,
Nor that whose beauty caused the golden strife :
No, no ! bring me an apple from the tree of life."

So there is one thought for the field, another for
the house. I would have my thoughts, like wild
apples, to be food for walkers, and will not war
rant them to be palatable, if tasted in the house.

296 WILD APPLES.

THEIR BEAUTY.

Almost all wild apples are handsome. They
cannot be too gnarly and crabbed and rusty to
look at. The gnarliest will have some redeem
ing traits even to the eye. You will discover
some evening redness dashed or sprinkled on
some protuberance or in some cavity. It is rare
that the summer lets an apple go without streak
ing or spotting it on some part of its sphere. It
will have some red stains, commemorating the
mornings and evenings it has witnessed ; some
dark and rusty blotches, in memory of the clouds
and foggy, mildewy days that have passed over
it; and a spacious field of green reflecting the
general face of Nature, — green even as the
fields ; or a yellow ground, which implies a
milder flavor, — yellow as the harvest, or russet
as the hills.

Apples, these I mean, unspeakably fair, — ap
ples not of Discord, but of Concord ! Yet not
so rare but that the homeliest may have a share.
Painted by the frosts, some a uniform clear
bright yellow, or red, or crimson, as if their
spheres had regularly revolved, and enjoyed the
influence of the sun on all sides alike, — some
with the faintest pink blush imaginable, — some
brindled with deep red streaks like a cow, or
with hundreds of fine blood-red rays running
regularly from the stem-dimple to the blossom-

WILD APPLES. 297

end, like meridional lines, on a straw-colored
ground, — some touched with a greenish rust,
like a fine lichen, here and there, with crimson
blotches or eyes more or less confluent and fiery
when wet, — and others gnarly, and freckled or
peppered all over on the stem side with fine
crimson spots on a white ground, as if accident
ally sprinkled from the brush of Him who paints
the autumn leaves. Others, again, are some
times red inside, perfused with a beautiful blush,
fairy food, too beautiful to eat, — apple of the
Hesperides, apple of the evening sky ! But like
shells and pebbles on the sea-shore, they must
be seen as they sparkle amid the withering
leaves in some dell in the woods, in the autum
nal air, or as they lie in the wet grass, and not
when they have wilted and faded in the house.

THE NAMING OF THEM.

It would be a pleasant pastime to find suit
able names for the hundred varieties which go
to a single heap at the cider-mill. Would it not
tax a man's invention, — no one to be named
after a man, and all in the lingua vernacula?
Who shall stand godfather at the christening of
the wild apples ? It would exhaust the Latin
and Greek languages, if they were used, and
make the lingua vernacula flag. We should

298 WILD APPLES.

have to call in the sunrise and the sunset, the
rainbow and the autumn woods and the wild
flowers, and the woodpecker and the purple
finch and the squirrel and the jay and the but
terfly, the November traveller and the truant
boy, to our aid.

In 1836 there were in the garden of the Lon
don Horticultural Society more than fourteen
hundred distinct sorts. But here are species
which they have not in their catalogue, not to
mention the varieties which our Crab might
yield to cultivation.

Let us enumerate a few of these. I find my
self compelled, after all, to give the Latin names
of some for the benefit of those who live where
English is not spoken, — for they are likely to
have a world-wide reputation.

There is, first of all, the Wood- Apple (Malus
sylvatica) ; the Blue-Jay Apple ; the Apple which
grows in Dells in the Woods, (sylvestrivallis ,)
also in Hollows in Pastures (campestrivallis) ;
the Apple that grows in an old Cellar-Hole
(Malus cellaris) ; the Meadow- Apple ; the Par
tridge-Apple ; the Truant's Apple, (Cessatoris,)
'which no boy will ever go by without knocking
off some, however late it may be; the Saun-
terer's Apple, — you must lose yourself before
you can find the way to that ; the Beauty of
the Air (Decus Aeris) ; December-Eating ; the

WILD APPLES. 299

Frozen-Thawed (g-elato-soluta), good only in that
state ; the Concord Apple, possibly the same
with the Mnsketaquidensis ; the Assabet Apple;
the Brindled Apple ; Wine of New England ;
the Chickaree Apple ; the Green Apple (Mains
viridis) ; — this has many synonymes ; in an
imperfect state, it is the Cholera morbifera aut
dysenterifera, pnerulis dilectissima ; — the Apple
which Atalanta stopped to pick up ; the Hedge-
Apple (Mains Sepinm) ; the Slug- Apple (lima-
cea) ; the Railroad- Apple, which perhaps came
from a core thrown out of the cars ; the Apple
whose Fruit we tasted in our Youth ; our Par
ticular Apple, not to be found in any catalogue,
— Pedestrium Solatium; also the Apple where
hangs the Forgotten Scythe ; Iduna's Apples,
and the Apples which Loki found in the Wood ;
and a great many more I have on my list, too
numerous to mention, — all of them good. As
Boda3us exclaims, referring to the cultivated
kinds, and adapting Virgil to his case, so I,
adapting Bodaeus, —

" Not if I had a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths,
An iron voice, could I describe all the forms
And reckon up all the names of these wild apples"

THE LAST GLEANING.

By the middle of November the wild apples
have lost some of their brilliancy, and have
chiefly fallen. A great part are decayed on the

300 WILD APPLES.

ground, and the sound ones are more palatable
than before. The note of the chickadee sounds
now more distinct, as you wander amid the old
trees, and the autumnal dandelion is half-closed
and tearful. But still, if you are a skilful
gleaner, you may get many a pocket-full even
of grafted fruit, long after apples are supposed
to be gone out-of-doors. I know a Blue-Pear-
main tree, growing within the edge of a swamp,
almost as good as wild. You would not sup
pose that there was any fruit left there, on the
first survey, but you must look according to sys
tem. Those which lie exposed are quite brown
and rotten now, or perchance a few still show
one blooming cheek here and there amid the
wet leaves. Nevertheless, with experienced eyes,
I explore amid the bare alders and the huckle
berry-bushes and the withered sedge, and in the
crevices of the rocks, which are full of leaves,
and pry under the fallen and decaying ferns,
which, with apple and alder leaves, thickly strew
the ground. For I know that they lie concealed,
fallen into hollows long since and covered up by
the leaves of the tree itself, — a proper kind of
packing. From these lurking-places, anywhere
within the circumference of the tree, I draw
forth the fruit, all wet and glossy, maybe nibbled
by rabbits and hollowed out by crickets and per
haps with a leaf or two cemented to it (as
Curzon an old manuscript from a monastery's

WILD APPLES. 301

mouldy cellar), but still with a rich bloom on it,
and at least as ripe and well kept, if not better
than those in barrels, more crisp and lively than
they. If these resources fail to yield anything,
I have learned to look between the bases of the
suckers which spring thickly from some horizon
tal limb, for now and then one lodges there, or
in the very midst of an alder-clump, where they
are covered by leaves, safe from cows which
may have smelled them out. If I am sharp-set,
for I do not refuse the Blue-Pearmain, I fill my
pockets on each side ; and as I retrace my steps
in the frosty eve, being perhaps four or five miles
from home, I eat one first from this side, and
then from that, to keep my balance.

I learn from Topsell's Gesner, whose authority
appears to be Albertus, that the following is the
way in which the hedgehog collects and carries
home his apples. He says, — " His meat is
apples, worms, or grapes : when he findeth ap
ples or grapes on the earth, he rolleth himself
upon them, until he have filled all his prickles,
and then carrieth them home to his den, never
bearing above one in his mouth ; and if it for
tune that one of them fall off by the way, he
likewise shaketh off all the residue, and wallow-
eth upon them afresh, until they be all settled
upon his back again. So, forth he goeth, making
a noise like a cart-wheel ; and if he have any

302 WILD APPLES.

young ones in his nest, they pull off his load
wherewithal he is loaded, eating thereof what
they please, and laying up the residue for the
time to come."

THE "FROZEN-THAWED" APPLE.

Toward the end of November, though some
of the sound ones are yet more mellow and
perhaps more edible, they have generally, like
the leaves, lost their beauty, and are beginning
to freeze. It is finger-cold, and»prudent farmers
get in their barrelled apples, and bring you the
apples and cider which they have engaged ; for
it is time to put them into the cellar. Perhaps
a few on the ground show their red cheeks
above the early snow, and occasionally some
even preserve their color and soundness under
the snow throughout the winter. But generally
at the beginning of the winter they freeze hard,
and soon, though undecayed, acquire the color
of a baked apple.

Before the end of December, generally, they
experience their first thawing. Those which a
month ago were sour, crabbed, and quite un
palatable to the civilized taste, such at least as
were frozen while sound, let a warmer sun come
to thaw them, for they are extremely sensitive
to its rays, are found to be filled with a rich,

WILD APPLES. 303

sweet cider, better than any bottled cider that
I know of, and with which I am better ac
quainted than with wine. All apples are good
in this state, and your jaws are the cider-press.
Others, which have more substance, are a sweet
and luscious food, — in my opinion of more
worth than the pine-apples which are imported
from the West Indies. Those which lately even
I tasted only to repent of it, — for I am semi-
civilized, — which the farmer willingly left on
the tree, I am now glad to find have the prop
erty of hanging on like the leaves of the young
oaks. It is a way to keep cider sweet without
boiling. Let the frost come to freeze them first,
solid as stones, and then the rain or a warm
winter day to thaw them, and they will seem to
have borrowed a flavor from heaven through the
medium of the air in which they hang. Or
perchance you find, when you get home, ttiat
those which rattled in your pocket have thawed,
and the ice is turned to cider. But after the
third or fourth freezing and thawing they will
not be found so good.

What are the imported half-ripe fruits of the
torrid South, to this fruit matured by the cold
of the frigid North ? These are those crabbed
apples with which I cheated my companion,
and kept a smooth face that I might tempt him
to eat. Now we both greedily fill our pockets

304 WILD APPLES.

with them, — bending to drink the cup and save
our lappets from the overflowing juice, — and
grow more social with their wine. Was there
one that hung so high and sheltered by the
tangled branches that our sticks could not dis
lodge it?

It is a fruit never carried to market, that I
am aware of, — quite distinct from the apple
of the markets, as from dried apple and cider,
— and it is not every winter that produces it in
perfection.

The era of the Wild Apple will soon be past.
It is a fruit which will probably become extinct
in New England. You may still wander through
old orchards of native fruit of great extent, which
for the most part went to the cider-mill, now all
gone to decay. I have heard of an orchard in
a distant town, on the side of a hill, where the
apples rolled down and lay four feet deep
against a wall on the lower side, and this the
owner cut down for fear they should be made
into cider. Since the temperance reform and
the general introduction of grafted fruit, no
native apple-trees, such as I see everywhere in
deserted pastures, and where the woods have
grown up around them, are set out. I fear that
he who walks over these fields a century hence
will not know the pleasure of knocking off

WILD APPLES. 305

wild apples. Ah, poor man, there are many
pleasures which he will not know ! Notwith
standing the prevalence of the Baldwin and
the Porter, I doubt if so extensive orchards
are set out to-day in my town as there were
a century ago, when those vast straggling cider-
orchards were planted, when men both ate and
drank apples, when the pomace-heap was the
only nursery, and trees cost nothing but the
trouble of setting them out. Men could afford
then to stick a tree by every wall-side and let it
take its chance. I see nobody planting trees
to-day in such out-of-the-way places, along the
lonely roads and lanes, and at the bottom of
dells in the wood. Now that they have grafted
trees, and pay a price for them, they collect them
into a plat by their houses, and fence them
in? — and the end of it all will be that we
shall be compelled to look for our apples in
a barrel.

This is " The word of the Lord that came to
Joel the son of Pethuel.

" Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all
ye inhabitants of the land! Hath this been
in your days, or even in the days of your
fathers? ....

" That which the palmer-worm hath left hath
the locust eaten ; and that which the locust hath
left hath the canker-worm eaten; and that which

20

306 WILD APPLES.

the canker-worm hath left hath the caterpillar
eaten.

" Awake, ye drunkards, and weep ! and howl,
all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine !
for it is cut off from your mouth.

" For a nation is come up upon my land,
strong, and without number, whose teeth are
the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek-teeth
of a great lion.

" He hath laid my vine waste, and barked
my fig-tree; he hath made it clean bare, and
cast it away; the branches thereof are made
white

" Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen ! howl,
O ye vine-dressers ! . . . .

" The vine is dried up, and the fig-tree lan-
guisheth ; the pomegranate-tree, the palm-tree
also, and the apple-tree, even all the trees of
the field, are withered : because joy is withered
away from the sons of men."

NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.

CHANCING to take a memorable walk by moon
light some years ago, I resolved to take more
such walks, and make acquaintance with an
other side of nature : I have done so.

According to Pliny, there is a stone in Arabia
called Selenites, " wherein is a white, which in
creases and decreases with the moon." My
journal for the last year or two, has been selen
itic in this sense.

Is not the midnight like Central Africa to
most of us? Are we not tempted to explore
it, — to penetrate to the shores of its lake Tchad,
and discover the source of its Nile, perchance
the Mountains of the Moon? Who knows
what fertility and beauty, moral and natural, are
there to be found ? In the Mountains of the
Moon, in the Central Africa of the night, there
is where all Niles have their hidden heads. The
expeditions up the Nile as yet extend but to the
Cataracts, or perchance to the mouth of the
White Nile ; but it is the Black Nile that con
cerns us.

I shall be a benefactor if I conquer some

308 NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.

realms from the night, if I report to the gazettes
anything transpiring about us at that season
worthy of their attention, — if I can show men
that there is some beauty awake while they are
asleep, — if I add to the domains of poetry.

Night is certainly more novel and less profane
than day. I soon discovered that I was ac
quainted only with its complexion, and as for
the moon, I had seen her only as it were through
a crevice in a shutter, occasionally. Why not
J walk a little way in her light ?

"" Suppose you attend to the suggestions which
the moon makes for one month, commonly in
vain, will it not be very different from anything
in literature or religion ? But why not study
this Sanscrit ? What if one moon has come and
gone with its world of poetry, its weird teach
ings, its oracular suggestions, — so divine a crea
ture freighted with hints for me, and I have not
used her ? One moon gone by unnoticed ?

I think it was Dr. Chalmers who said, criticis
ing Coleridge, that for his part he wanted ideas
which he could see all round, and not such as he
must look at away up in the heavens. Such a
man, one would say, would never look at the
moon, because she never turns her other side to us.
The light which comes from ideas which have
their orbit as distant from the earth, and which
is no less cheering and enlightening to the be-

NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT. 309

nighted traveller than that of the moon and
stars, is naturally reproached or nicknai»ed as
moonshine by such. They are moonshine, are
they ? Well, then do your night-travelling when
there is no moon to light you ; but I will be
thankful for the light that reaches me from the
star of least magnitude. Stars are lesser or
greater only as they appear to us so. I will be
thankful that I see so much as one side of a
celestial idea, — one side of the rainbow, — and
the sunset sky.

Men talk glibly enough about moonshine, as
if they knew its qualities very well, and despised
them ; as owls might talk of sunshine. None
of your sunshine, — but this word commonly
means merely something which they do not un
derstand, — which they are abed and asleep to,
however much it may be worth their while to be
/up and awake to it.

It must be allowed that the light of the moon,
sufficient though it is for the pensive walker, and
not disproportionate to the inner light we have,
is very inferior in quality and intensity to that
of the sun. But the moon is not to be judged
alone by the quantity of light she sends to us,
but also by her influence on the earth and its
inhabitants. " The moon gravitates toward the
earth, and the earth reciprocally toward the
moon." The poet who walks by moonlight is

310 NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.

conscious of a tide in his thought which is to be
referred to lunar influence. I will endeavor to
separate the tide in my thoughts from the cur
rent distractions of the day. I would warn my
hearers that they must not try my thoughts by
a daylight standard, but endeavor to realize that
•I speak out of the night, AJ1 depends on your
point of view. In Drake's " Collection of Voy
ages," Wafer says of some Albinoes among the
Indians of Darien, « They are quite white, but
their whiteness is like that of a horse, quite dif
ferent from the fair or pale European, as they
have not the least tincture of a blush or sanguine
complexion. * * * Their eyebrows are milk-
white, as is likewise the hair of their heads,
which is very fine. * * * They seldom go
abroad in the daytime, the sun being disagree
able to them, and causing their eyes, which are
weak and poring, to water, especially if it shines
towards them, yet they see very well by moon
light, from which we call them moon-eyed."

Neither in our thoughts in these moonlight
walks, methinks, is there " the least tincture of a
blush or sanguine complexion," but we are in
tellectually and morally Albinoes, — children of
Endymion, — such is the effect of conversing
much with the moon.

I complain of Arctic voyagers that they do
not enough remind us of the constant peculiar

NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT. 311

dreariness of the scenery, and the perpetual twi
light of the Arctic night. So he whose theme
is moonlight, though he may find it difficult,
must, as it were, illustrate it with the light of

the moon alone. ;- «—

"* Many men walk by day ; few walk by night.
It is a very different season. Take a July night,
for instance. About ten o'clock, — when man
is asleep, and day fairly forgotten, — the beauty
of moonlight is seen over lonely pastures where
cattle are silently feeding. On all sides novel
ties present themselves. Instead of the sun
there are the moon and stars, instead of the
wood-thrush there is the whip-poor-will, — in
stead of butterflies in the meadows, fire-flies,
winged sparks of fire ! who would have believed
it? What kind of cool deliberate life dwells in
those dewy abodes associated with a spark of
fire ? So man has fire in his eyes, or blood, or
brain. Instead of singing birds, the half-throt
tled note of a cuckoo flying over, the croaking of
frogs, and the intenser dream of crickets. But
above all, the wonderful trump of the bull-frog,
ringing from Maine to Georgia. The potato-
vines stand upright, the corn grows apace, the
bushes loom, the grain-fields are boundless. On
our open river terraces once cultivated by the
Indian, they appear to occupy the ground like
an army, — their heads nodding in the breeze.

312 NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.

Small trees and shrubs are seen in the midst,
overwhelmed as by an inundation. The shadows
of rocks and trees, and shrubs and hills, are more
conspicuous than the objects themselves. The
slightest irregularities in the ground are revealed
by the shadows, and what the feet find com
paratively smooth, appears rough and diversified
in consequence. For the same reason the whole
landscape is more variegated and picturesque
than by day. The smallest recesses in the rocks
are dim and cavernous ; the ferns in the wood
appear of tropical size. The sweet fern and in
digo in overgrown wood-paths wet you with dew
up to your middle. The leaves of the shrub-oak
are shining as if a liquid were flowing over them.
The pools seen through the trees are as full of
light as the sky. " The light of the day takes
refuge in their bosoms," as the Purana says of
the ocean. All white objects are more remark
able than by day. A distant cliff looks like a
phosphorescent space on a hillside. The woods
are heavy and dark. Nature slumbers. You
see the moonlight reflected from particular
stumps in the recesses of the forest, as if she se
lected what to shine on. These small fractions
of her light remind one of the plant called moon-
seed, — as if the moon were sowing it in such
Iptaces.

In the night the eyes are partly closed or retire

NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT. 313

into the head. Other senses take the lead. The
walker is guided as well by the sense of smell.
Every plant and field and forest emits its odor
now, swamp-pink in the meadow and tansy in
the road ; and there is the peculiar dry scent of
corn which has begun to show its tassels. The
senses both of hearing and smelling are more
alert. We hear the tinkling of rills which we
never detected before. From time to time, high
up on the sides of hills, you pass through a
stratum of warm air. A blast which has come
up from the sultry plains of noon. It tells of
the day, of sunny noon-tide hours and banks,
of the laborer wiping his brow and the bee hum
ming amid flowers. It is an air in which work
has been done, — which men have breathed. It
circulates about from wood-side to hill-side like
a dog that has lost its master, now that the sun
is gone. The rocks retain all night the warmth
of the sun which they have absorbed. And so
does the sand. If you dig a few inches into it
you find a warm bed. You lie on your back on
a rock in a pasture on the top of some bare hill
at midnight, and speculate on the height of the
starry canopy. The stars are the jewels of the
night, and perchance surpass anything which
day has to show. A companion with whom I
was sailing one very windy but bright moon
light night, when the stars were few and faint,

314 NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.

thought that a man could get along with them,
— though he was considerably reduced in his
circumstances, — that they were a kind of bread
and cheese that never failed.

No wonder that there have been astrologers,
that some have conceived that they were per
sonally related to particular stars. Dubartas, as
translated by Sylvester, says he'll

" not believe that the great architect
With all these fires the heavenly arches decked
Only for show, and with these glistering shields,
T" awake poor shepherds, watching in the fields."
He'll " not believe that the least flower which pranks
Our garden borders, or our common banks,
And the least stone, that in her warming lap
Our mother earth doth covetously wrap,
Hath some peculiar virtue of its own,
And that the glorious stars of heav'n have none."

And Sir Walter Raleigh well says, " the stars
are instruments of far greater use, than to give
an obscure light, and for men to gaze on after
sunset;" and he quotes Plotinus as affirming
that they " are significant, but not efficient ; "
and also Augustine as saying, " Deus regit in-
feriora corpora per superiora : " God rules the
bodies below by those above. But best of all is
this which another writer has expressed : " Sa
piens adjuvabit opus astrorum quemadmodum ag-
ricola terrce naturam : " a wise man assisteth

NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.. 315

the work of the stars as the husbandman help-
eth the nature of the soil.

It does not concern men who are asleep in
their beds, but it is very important to the trav
eller, whether the moon shines brightly or is
obscured. It is not easy to realize the serene
joy of all the earth, when she commences to
shine unobstructedly, unless you have often been
abroad alone in moonlight nights. She seems
to be waging continual war with the clouds in
your behalf. Yet we fancy the clouds to be her
foes also. She comes on magnifying her dan
gers by her light, revealing, displaying them in
all their hugeness and blackness, then suddenly
casts them behind into the light concealed, and
goes her way triumphant through a small space
of clear sky.

In short, the moon traversing, or appearing to
traverse, the small clouds which lie in her way,
now obscured by them, now easily dissipating
and shining through them, makes the drama of
the moonlight night to all watchers and night-
travellers. f Sailors speak of it as the moon eat
ing up the clouds. The traveller all alone, the
moon all alone, except for his sympathy, over
coming with incessant victory whole squadrons
of clouds above the forests and lakes and hills.
When she is obscured he so sympathizes with
her that he could whip a dog for her relief, as

316 .NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.

Indians do. When she enters on a clear field of
great extent in the heavens, and shines unob-
structedly, he is glad. And when she has fought
her way through all the squadron of her foes,
and rides majestic in a clear sky unscathed, and
there are no more any obstructions in her path,
he cheerfully and confidently pursues his way,
and rejoices in his heart, and the cricket also
seems to express joy in its song.

How insupportable would be the days, if the
night with its dews and darkness did not come
to restore the drooping world. As the shades
begin to gather around us, our primeval instincts
are aroused, and we steal forth from our lairs,
like the inhabitants of the jungle, in search of
those silent and brooding thoughts which are
the natural prey of the intellect.

Richter says that " The earth is every day
overspread with the veil of night for the same
reason as the cages of birds are darkened, viz :
that we may the more readily apprehend the
higher harmonies of thought in the hush and
quiet of darkness. Thoughts which day turns
into smoke and mist, stand about us in the night
as light and flames ; even as the column which
fluctuates above the crater of Vesuvius, in the
daytime appears a pillar of cloud, but by night
a pillar of fire."

There are nights In this climate of such se-

NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT. 317

rene and majestic beauty, so medicinal and fer
tilizing to the spirit, that methinks a sensitive
nature would not devote them to oblivion, and
perhaps there is no man but would be better and
wiser for spending them out of doors, though
he should sleep all the next day to pay for it ;
should sleep an Endymion sleep, as the ancients
expressed it, — nights which warrant the Grecian
epithet ambrosial, when, as in the land of Beu-
lah, the atmosphere is charged with dewy fra
grance, and with music, and we take our repose
and have our dreams awake, — when the moon,
not secondary to the sun,

" gives us his blaze again,
Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day.
Now through the passing cloud she seems to stoop,
Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime."

Diana still hunts in the New England sky.

" In Heaven queen she is among the spheres.

She, mistress-like, makes all things to be pure.
Eternity in her oft change she bears ;
She Beauty is ; by her the fair endure.

Time wears her not ; she doth his chariot guide ;

Mortality below her orb is placed ;
By her the virtues of the stars down slide ;

By her is Virtue's perfect image cast."

The Hindoos compare the moon to a saintly
being who has reached the last stage of bodily
existence.

318 NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.

Great restorer of antiquity, .great enchanter.
In a mild night, when the harvest or hunter's
moon shines unobstructedly, the houses in our
village, whatever architect they may have had
by day, acknowledge only a master. The village
street is then as wild as the forest. New and
old things are confounded. I know not whether
I am sitting on the ruins of a wall, or on the ma
terial which is to compose a new one. Nature
is an instructed and impartial teacher, spreading
no crude opinions, and flattering none ; she will
be neither radical nor conservative. Consider
the moonlight, so civil, yet so savage !

The light is more proportionate to our knowl
edge than that of day. It is no more dusky in
ordinary nights, than our mind's habitual atmos
phere, and the moonlight is as bright as our
most illuminated moments are.

" In such a night let me abroad remain
Till morning breaks, and all's confused again."

Of what significance the light of day, if it is
not the reflection of an inward dawn ? — to what
purpose is the veil of night withdrawn, if the
morning reveals nothing to the soul ? It is
merely garish and glaring.

When Ossian in his address to the sun ex
claims,

" Where has darkness its -dwelling ?
Where is the cavernous home of the stars,

NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT. 319

When thou quickly followest their steps,
Pursuing them like a hunter in the sky, —
Thou climbing the lofty hills,
They descending on barren mountains ? "

who does not in his thought accompany the
stars to their " cavernous home," " descending "
with them " on barren mountains ? "

Nevertheless, even by night the sky is blue/
and not black, for we see through the shadow
of the earth into the distant atmosphere of day]
where the sunbeams are revelling.

THE END.

CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY H. o. HOUGHTON.

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY